Topic: American Shadows: Coercion, Conspiracy, and the Mysteries of State

Catalog description

This course offers a critical examination of US empire through an interdisciplinary lens that includes parapolitics, an emerging academic discipline offering a theoretical emphasis on the political role of elite criminality. The course examines theories of human sociality and applies these to issues of injustice, race, and conflict in the contemporary US. The goal of the course is to encourage students to think critically about the serious cultural challenges presently facing US and European societies in particular, to hone their writing skills, and to provide a conceptual framework according to which certain claims of state may be meaningfully assessed, including assertions of mal-, mis-, and/or disinformation, attributions of “conspiracy theory,” as well as the perceived need for state and/or corporate censorship.