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Nearly everyone has some intuitive sense of “how things ought to be” – some sense, for example, that fairness matters and that people ought to be treated “properly.” These are ultimately intuitions about justice and they are often very strongly held and, apparently, quite deeply rooted. In fact, recent research in psychology suggests that even non-human primates will inflict costly punishment in response to an unfair deal.

The problem, of course, is that there also are deep disagreements about just how things ought to be and what exactly constitutes fairness or “proper” treatment. In this course we will critically examine some of the main theories of justice on offer in the Western philosophical tradition.

Theorists who we will consider include Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Robert Nozick, and John Rawls. We will proceed by looking at contemporary examples including taxation and distributive justice, executive pay, affirmative action, immigration, punishment, freedom of expression, and toleration of religious and cultural practices.

This course will introduce participants to the study of urban history and environmental history. By exploring the ways that nature has shaped cities, as well as the ways that cities have shaped nature, participants will learn how people’s lives were structured by ideas and material realities in the most densely populated places of the United States and Canada during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course considers how urban environments have been transformed over time, how these places have been imagined, the ways urban environments functioned in the past, and the challenges that inhabitants of urban environments have faced in attempting to meet their needs. By considering topics, such as technology, food, space, and waste, this course will reveal how and why people have manipulated and adjusted to the natural world in order to live in cities. Moreover, this course will consider what has been created and what has been destroyed in the process of urbanizing the environment?

Historians of Georgian (eighteenth-century) Britain tend to view it as a crucial epoch in the beginning of modernity –commercial and industrial revolutions, demographic transition, the fiscal-military state, imperial expansion, the rise of working-class and artisan radicalism, and the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere. But this time of origins and transitions was also cast in contradictions and conflict: riches and poverty; liberty and slavery; gender divisions; private life and public virtue; consumers and criminals; enlightened rationalism and religious enthusiasm, oligarchic government and popular radicalism. This course provides an overview of these and other themes emerging from a traditional society falling in love with the new, the exotic and the extravagant. Topics covered during the course will include: the seventeenth century legacy; religious identities; politics and political change; industrial revolutions; war and state formation; imperial crisis and expansion; radicalism; consumerism; slavery and abolition.

As part of its electoral platform in the 2015 Canadian General Election, the Liberal Party promised to make that election “the last [to be held] under the First Past the Post system [FPTP].” A Special All-Party Committee on Electoral Reform is currently studying the issue and has been instructed to issue its recommendations by the end of December 2016. This course will examine several topics related to that promise, including: Why was it made? Was there a pressing need and widespread public support for electoral change? Is a different method of election needed in Canada? Is it desirable? Is there a ”single best” alternative to FPTP? What are the implications for parties, voters, and Government of a different electoral system? We will explore various methods of majoritarian and proportional electoral systems and learn how different systems work in such countries as Australia and Germany. The issue of compulsory voting will be broached, as will the questions of whether (a) a nation-wide referendum and (b) a constitutional amendment would be needed before Canada could adopt a new method of election.

Scotland has always been a different sort of place, and not just because of its place in the world and history. Distinctiveness has long been a leading characteristic of its culture and not least its literature. In this course, we will explore and discuss some of the ways in which being different has given Scottish literature an international significance. Alongside the medieval bards and makars, Robert Burns and Walter Scott, Stevenson and Barrie, and the extraordinary vitality of contemporary Scottish writing, we will look at some home-grown varieties of some giant literary personalities: among them Macbeth, Wallace, and Mary, Queen of Scots. Prepare for some very different perspectives and vigorous discussion.

We often hear the statement “My grandchild could make that!” applied to contemporary art, all the while thinking that something beautiful and recognizable is more akin to what art should be. How did aesthetics get to the point of lines on a canvas being art? Why is something that looks like mere squiggles worth so much money?

This class will explore how art moved from the recognizable realism of the 18th century, through the modern art movements of the 20th century, ultimately resulting in the sometimes odd looking world of contemporary art. Through the eight weeks this class will navigate these developments and look at the cultural and aesthetic changes that directed them. It will become clear how the simple discovery of photography changed the art world and the role of the artist, and once freed, artists explored the potential of their craft leading to the diversity of art today.

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