Strangers, Foreigners, and the Politics of Difference

Catalog description

In this course, students will gain insight into fundamental questions of politics and ethics by approaching them from the point of view of those whom political and ethical theory have tended to exclude. We will gain new perspective on the normative and empirical foundations of political life by centering the foreigner, the migrant, the asylum seeker, and the criminal rather than the state, the citizen, or the collective. And we will consider fundamental questions of ethics, identity, and belonging by grappling with the role of the stranger in ethical, civic, and social life. The course will cover issues of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism; the political theory of the city; the politics and ethics of recognition; the role of belonging in a democracy; and the political dimensions of self-knowledge and identity formation, among much else. Our readings will draw from both canonical and contemporary texts in political theory, ethics, the social sciences, phenomenology, and the arts. This is a seminar primarily for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.