The Liberal Imagination

Catalog description

Has liberalism run out of steam? Given the ascendency of the American far right and the attempt to move on from liberalism on the American left, do we still live in a liberal world-order? What do we mean by “liberalism?” This graduate seminar examines key ideas of freedom, race, property, enfranchisement, and the social contract in the development of liberal thought from the Enlightenment to the 21st century. Along the way, we ask such questions as: What is liberalism’s relationship to Marxism and “radical left” politics? How might liberalism inform aesthetics, literature, and culture? What exactly is a liberal imagination? Readings likely include Locke, Equiano, Wollstonecraft, Rousseau, Kant, JS Mill, David Walker, Marx, Arendt, Trilling, Macpherson, Rawls, Carole Pateman, Charles Mills, Amanda Anderson, David Eng, Elizabeth Anker, and Jasbir Puar.