SCHOOL OF CIVIC LIFE AND LEADERSHIP (SCLL)

C.S. Lewis was a novelist, social critic, and one of the 20th century's most widely-read public intellectuals. He is most often remembered today as the creator of Narnia, but he wrote compellingly on topics like myth, morality, beauty, friendship, education, science, religion, and life in a democratic society. In all of his writing, Lewis sought to find a foundation of meaning and beauty that could support a life of intellectual integrity. This course follows Lewis's intellectual and aesthetic development over the course of his life, seeking him especially in the books he wrote and the books that shaped him.

This course examines how early American literature engages the tensions and aspirations of the American political tradition. Beginning with the Declaration of Independence, students will read short stories, poems, and novels that reflect, contest, and reinterpret the meaning of equality, liberty, citizenship, and national identity in the early republic. Through a multidisciplinary study of literary and political texts, the course considers how imaginative writing can deepen understanding of the moral and political questions that shape a pluralistic democracy. Students will develop their ability to analyze foundational American ideas, assess their significance for human flourishing, and participate thoughtfully in civic life.

This course introduces students to the central questions of political philosophy through the study of major philosophical and literary texts in the Western tradition. It examines enduring debates about human nature, justice, liberty, citizenship, and political order, asking how human beings ought to live together in community. Students will consider the relationship between the good person and the good citizen, the moral and institutional foundations of political society, and the tensions inherent in democratic life. Through engagement with foundational texts, the course develops students' capacity for critical reflection, civic perspective, and thoughtful participation in democratic life.

What, if any, responsibilities accompany democratic citizenship? Voting? Active participation in political meetings? Obeying laws? Volunteering in one's community? Preserving natural resources for future generations? Adhering to certain values? Protesting unjust laws? This course offers an overview of the different ways in which Americans have answered these questions. Students may not receive credit for both SCLL 85 and SCLL 185.

Special topics course. Content will vary each semester. Honors version available.

What does it mean to live a good life? This is the question that every self-reflecting person must eventually ask, and it requires us to answer several related questions: How should I live? Whom and how should I love? What claims do family, friends, and country have on me? What is the source of meaning, purpose, happiness, and transcendence? How should I deal with suffering, injustice, and my own mortality? We will explore profound attempts to answer these questions from many different philosophic and literary perspectives, faith traditions, cultures, and time periods.

How should we live together? This fundamental political question arises because human beings cannot live alone, yet--unlike other animals--we have no fixed mode of organizing our common life. To answer it, we must determine what is fixed and what is malleable about human nature. We must weigh tradeoffs between security, liberty, and justice. We must determine how to distribute honor, power, and resources, and we must confront the horrors of war, violence, and oppression. This course explores these problems through engaging in conversation with great works of philosophy, literature, history, and rhetoric across human history and cultures.

This course challenges our culture of short attention spans and multi-tasking by focusing on one fundamental work of classic civic thought and reading it with care. The aim is to deeply engage with a book as a lens onto the past, a work of art, a forum for life's big questions, and a guide to civic life. Please consult the department website to see which work will be taught this semester.

This class examines the contemporary polarization through political, sociological, and ethical lenses while emphasizing practical skills for dialogue. Students will practice listening, argumentation, and collaborative problem-solving about controversial contemporary issues in settings that mirror real-world disagreements. By integrating theory and practice, the course aims to prepare students to engage thoughtfully and constructively in civic life.

From Plato's Republic to modern dystopias, people have imagined societies that might better realize justice, equality, and the common good. This course studies utopian and dystopian thought in the West, examining how writers and philosophers envisioned religion, economy, governance, and citizenship. We will consider the possibilities and limits of these imagined societies and what lessons they offer for our own civic horizon.

This course explores classic philosophical debates about education as a foundation for civic life. From Plato to Dewey, we'll consider how thinkers have connected learning to freedom, virtue, and participation in the common good. Topics include who should guide education--the state, parents, or civic society--and whether education should aim to perfect the individual, strengthen society, or reconcile the two. Through close reading and discussion, students will examine how theories of education shape policies, democratic citizenship, and public discourse.

Love and death are not merely private experiences--they are central to our public and civic lives. This course explores how love inspires solidarity, compassion, and sacrifice, while death confronts us with questions of justice, memory, and moral duty. Through classical and modern texts, we'll consider how we should honor the dead, value life, and understand love as both a personal passion and a civic virtue. These paradoxes are examined in works of literature, philosophy, and art.

How does a faith tradition understand those beyond its boundaries? How do such outsiders shape it in turn? This course traces Islam's development through its encounters with other religions and cultures and through its wrestling with political and philosophical questions. Students will explore how these interactions illuminate this tradition and shape both Islamic self-understanding and broader debates about truth, justice, tolerance, and boundaries.

From ancient pilgrims to modern explorers, travelers have long reflected on what it means to meet the unfamiliar. This course examines travel writing as a record of cross-cultural encounter and moral reflection. Through classic texts from multiple traditions, students will consider how travel narratives have shaped understandings of citizenship, identity, and the common good. What civic virtues--or vices--emerge when individuals confront difference? Can travel foster genuine dialogue across difference, or does it inevitably reinforce boundaries?

This course explores fundamental questions about civic life and the nature of leadership in America. It focuses on the political thought and statesmanship of American politicians, writers, and prominent citizens from the Founding up to the twenty-first century, with special emphasis on three critical "moments": 1) the Founding, 2) the Crisis of the House Divided (slavery and the Civil War) and 3) the Civil Rights Movement and the rise of contemporary progressive and conservative visions of America. Previously offered as SCLL 100. Honors version available.

How does the economic system shape citizens? This course explores the relationship between markets and morals through the writings of thinkers ancient and modern. Students will examine debates over property, labor, and inequality from ancient ethics to modern social science, and consider how they inform public discourse today. The course pays particular attention to the development of American economic systems. By studying both critics and defenders of commercial society, the course invites reflection on what it means to balance prosperity, justice, and the common good.

The question of "American character" has defined - and divided - the nation from its inception. This course examines whether there exists a core set of American virtues, or whether American identity is something more contested, constructed through inclusion and exclusion. Through debate and deliberation, we'll explore how competing answers in works of philosophy, literature, and film shape citizenship: who belongs, who decides, and what responsibilities come with membership in the American civic community.

Partisan division is not new - but understanding it requires both history and philosophy. This course examines the development of left, right, and center in modern political thought, following key ideas from the Enlightenment through contemporary American ideological movements like socialism, progressivism, libertarianism, and neoconservatism. Students will analyze how these traditions shape our political life and how opposing ideas often share common origins. Emphasizing dialogue and critical reflection, the course equips students to engage political disagreements with civility, curiosity, and respect for truth. Previously offered as SCLL 237.

This course examines leadership styles in American politics, exploring questions about authority, citizenship, and democratic participation. Students analyze how different forms of leadership have shaped - and sometimes threatened - democratic citizenship and institutional governance, from ideological justifications for authority to the role of communication technology.

This course examines the intellectual, cultural, and social underpinnings of American civic life through the eyes of Alexis de Tocqueville. Students explore the promise and perils of modern democracy.

What, if any, responsibilities accompany democratic citizenship? Voting? Active participation in political meetings? Obeying laws? Volunteering in one's community? Preserving natural resources for future generations? Adhering to certain values? Protesting unjust laws? This course offers an overview of the different ways in which Americans have answered these questions. Students may not receive credit for both SCLL 85 and SCLL 185.

This course provides students an opportunity to engage in the study of special topics in civic life and leadership.

This course focuses on the ideas and practices necessary to analyze arguments and disagree in a productive and compassionate way, especially at a time of deep polarization in American culture. Students in this course will debate five, contentious, contemporary topics to practice researching multiple sides of an issue significant to civil society, engaging in oral and written argument, and developing criteria by which to evaluate argument, evidence, and debate performance. Course previously offered as SCLL 101.

This interdisciplinary course explores the civic and personal value of reading through humanistic reflection across the ages, modern social science, and practical experiment. We will investigate connections between reading and attention, empathy, mental health, civic participation, and political life. Alongside theoretical reflection, you'll practice deep attention to a novel of your choice.

A survey of the Cold War from its origins in the aftermath of the Second World War to its conclusion in the late 1980s. Focuses on the geopolitical, military, ideological, and economic aspects of the global superpower conflict.

This course examines how civic and political life is interpreted through the contrasting frameworks of tragedy and comedy. Students will explore what each lens reveals - and obscures - about human nature, justice, and power. How these categories influence our judgments about justice, leadership, and civic responsibility will also be considered. Through readings in literature, philosophy, and political theory, we consider whether these perspectives can be combined or transcended to offer a richer understanding of politics and civic life.

This course traces the evolution of the concept of vocation from its origins in medieval monastic life through the Protestant Reformation to contemporary ideals of purpose and fulfillment. Students will examine how changing ideas about vocation have shaped understandings of work, identity, and civic responsibility across time. Through historical and philosophical inquiry, the course invites reflection on how these traditions inform modern debates about career and life purpose.

What is the university for? This course investigates the historical and philosophical foundations of higher education and its role in shaping democratic society. Students will debate questions about free expression, intellectual liberty, and the balance between academic study and vocational preparation. Focusing on the American context, students will explore the history of higher education, competing visions of liberal learning, and the challenges of balancing intellectual freedom with professional training. Emphasis is placed on critical dialogue about the university as an institution, an ideal, and a community.

This seminar explores how modern writers use lawbreakers to explore collisions between the individual and the civic collective. Using major works of the Western literary canon, students will examine questions central to civic life: crime, punishment, law, legitimacy, moral responsibility, and the relationship between individual conscience and public order. Readings engage major literary and philosophic schools, including realism, absurdism, and existentialism, inviting reflection on justice, responsibility, and the fragile bonds of civic life.

This course examines the qualities that define exemplary leaders and the models that shape our aspirations. What makes for a hero, a statesman, or a good leader - and what leads to their opposites? Students will explore how education, experience, and character contribute to leadership, while considering the cultural and political forces that elevate or undermine these ideals. Through discussion and analysis, we reflect on the role of models in civic life and leadership.

This course examines the enduring tension between free expression and its boundaries, from Socrates' trial and Jesus' execution to today's debates about cancel culture. Students will explore the ethical and political challenges of free speech in a world of deep disagreement, considering the virtues required to speak freely and truthfully as members of democratic and other communities. Through philosophical and historical inquiry, we ask what freedom, and especially freedom of speech, means and demands for civic life today.

This course examines how Christian thinkers have approached some of today's most contested moral topics - war, sex, money, abortion, gender, race, and more - while placing their views in dialogue with secular perspectives. Through examining historical and contemporary debates, students will explore competing visions of what it means to live well, individually and communally. Throughout, the course elucidates the ways in which Christian ethics has shaped Western civic and political life. It explores how contemporary ethical and political perspectives, including secular perspectives, often unwittingly presuppose Christian theological commitments.

This course examines the Declaration of Independence as both a founding political act and a statement of enduring civic ideals. Students will study the historical circumstances that produced the document, the philosophical claims it makes about human equality and rights, and its influence on later debates about liberty and justice. From the Revolution to civil rights movements, we will trace how Americans have invoked - and contested - the Declaration's principles in the ongoing work of self-government. Previously offered as SCLL 155.

This course explores the relationship between family and politics across the history of Western thought. From ancient Greece to modern feminist theory, we examine why families exist, what forms they take, and the purposes they serve in different political regimes. Topics include sex, marriage, childrearing, and the boundaries between private and public life. Previously offered as SCLL 145.

This course explores democracy from its Athenian origins to its American present. Does modern democracy fulfill ancient democracy's ideals, or depart from them? And what can the world's first democracy teach us about civic life today? Through engaging case studies, students investigate democracy's challenges and promises--and consider what it asks of citizens now. Topics may include freedom, equality, and rights; democratic institutions; citizenship; rhetoric; leadership, democratic knowledge, and decision-making; foreign policy; tyranny and corruption; religion; and hope.

Communism promised a new civic order and liberation from inequality - yet ended in collapse. This course investigates the intellectual and cultural foundations of communism, the principal ideological rival to the United States for much of the twentieth century, and the American dissent that opposed it. We will examine communism's moral and political aspirations, how they fell short, and how its legacy informs our contemporary thinking about justice, democracy, and civic obligation. Working with primary source documents, we will specifically encounter the Soviet regime's forerunners, founders, defenders, and most trenchant critics.

Classical Athens saw perhaps the greatest flourishing of political, philosophic, and cultural thought ever to occur in such a small place over so short a time. In this class, we take seriously the possibility that its thinkers may in fact have something of the highest importance to say to us. Following these authors, we will consider the relationship between democracy and tyranny, and the tension between the needs of politics and the aims of the individual. We will investigate these authors' arguments about virtue, justice, and the ultimate ends of political life.

This course examines the role of rhetoric in shaping political action and civic life. Students will explore how speech can inspire, persuade, and manipulate, as well as the reciprocal power between speakers and audiences. Particular attention will be paid to the role of political rhetoric in the traditions stemming from classical Greece and Judeo-Christianity. Through classic texts and contemporary examples, we analyze the ethical and practical dimensions of rhetoric, the difference between statesmanship and demagoguery, and what these dynamics reveal about human nature.

The Roman Republic's success - and the dramatic failure of its institutions - has shaped political imagination for over two millennia. This course examines Rome not only as a historical polity but as a recurring ideal in Western political thought. We consider the tensions between republican virtue and imperial expansion, constitutional stability and civic decay, and the uses and misuses of Roman precedent in later political contexts. Readings focus on key moments: Cicero's defense of the Republic, Machiavelli's revival of Roman politics, Shakespeare's dramatic interpretation of Roman character and civic breakdown, and the American Founders' selective appropriation of Roman models.

This course is for students selected as Undergraduate Learning Assistants (ULAs) for SCLL courses during the semester they serve as ULAs. This course will provide support and structure to make them effective in their role, including training in pedagogy and University policies; ongoing mentorship and supervision; and opportunities for reflection, assessment, and evaluation. May not count toward the SCLL major.

Thomas Aquinas is one of the most influential figures in the history of Western philosophy, religion, and civic life. On nearly everything he writes about -- virtue, passions, law, love, God, justice, reason, evil, and much else -- he has something illuminating to say. This course constitutes an extended engagement with Thomas's thought, primarily through attention to his Summa theologiae. Students will seek to understand Thomas both on his own terms and as a resource for contemporary efforts to understand and engage philosophy and civic life.

This course introduces students to American politics and culture through the eyes of some of its greatest admirers and most vehement critics from the sixteenth century to the present. Learning to think with and against these authors can clarify what sets America apart from the surrounding world, for better or worse.

What was the Enlightenment, and what remains of it today? This seminar examines the civic legacy of the Enlightenment and its significance for democratic life, including the development of Enlightenment ideas about reason, progress, religion, and rights--and the counter-movements they inspired. Students will read philosophers, scientists, and revolutionaries alongside their critics, asking whether reason leads to liberation or domination, tolerance or terror. The course situates the Enlightenment as a turning point in the history of civic ideals and the pursuit of a rational public sphere.

Since the late eighteenth century, liberalism--the belief that individuals and their rights are the foundation of political life--has shaped modern civic culture and democratic institutions. Yet liberalism has always had its challengers. This course examines major philosophical debates about liberty, equality, and community. Students will explore how nineteenth and twentieth century thinkers wrestled with liberalism's deepest tensions--between individual freedom and moral order, self-expression and civic duty--and consider the fate of these ideas today.

This course examines the philosophical exchange between the Christian and Islamic worlds as both attempted to reconcile pagan Greek learning with monotheistic religion. By studying these attempts to balance faith and philosophy, students will discover the shared intellectual roots of the Islamic and Christian worlds and gain insight into how dialogue across difference can enrich civic and moral understanding today.

This course explores the complex relationship between science and public life. Beginning with the origins of scientific thought in the ancient world and tracing its modern transformations, students will examine how changing ideas of knowledge and method have influenced political authority, social order, and conceptions of human nature. We will consider how the pursuit of scientific truth intersects with civic virtue, democratic deliberation, and the ethical challenges of living in a technological society. Previously offered as SCLL 200.

This course introduces students to the complex interplay between scientific inquiry, policymaking, and public discourse. Students will examine how science can influence policy at both the state and national level. We will discuss a wide variety of case studies, and students will work together to develop a science-related policy.

In this course, students will participate in an internship (generally off-campus), meet regularly with a mentor, and write a reflection upon the experience.

Students create a study plan for a research project in partnership with a faculty mentor. The student work is done independently; however, mentor and student meet regularly. The project usually culminates in a substantial research paper.

An independent student in the School of Civic Life and Leadership: student and professor determine a set of readings together on a topic or theme.

This course traces the intellectual tradition of natural law - the idea that there are moral principles valid for all people, in all times and places - and explores how it has shaped debates about freedom, authority, and the common good. Beginning with classical and Christian sources, students will engage major thinkers from Grotius and Hobbes to Locke and Rousseau, and examine how their ideas informed the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century. The course concludes by exploring the modern legacy of natural law in contemporary discussions of liberalism, conscience, and human rights.

Is politics inherently religious? Is the "Antichrist" a useful political concept? Is Christianity opposed to democracy? This course engages questions at the intersection of politics and theology. We'll explore the political vision of figures like Augustine, Aquinas, and their heirs, along with secularists who see Western politics as echoing Christian theology or want to banish religion from politics. We'll read theologians who argue for Christendom alongside their religious and non-religious opponents. Throughout, we'll seek to understand the nature of politics, how theological thinkers grapple with politics, and how reflection on political life can help us understand theological traditions.

What does it mean to be represented? This course explores the theory and practice of representative government. We will examine the duties of elected officials, the obligations of citizens, and the form of representative institutions. Students will engage with historical and philosophical texts as well as modern proposals for deliberative and non-electoral forms of representation. The course emphasizes how the quality of civic discourse affects both representation and the health of democratic life.

This course provides students an opportunity to engage in intensive study of special topics in civic life and leadership.

What separates successful states from failed ones? This course explores grand strategy as the long-term planning and execution of a nation's political, military, and economic goals. This course examines the theory and history of grand strategy in international affairs over the last 2,500 years. By looking at a series of thinkers, practitioners, and case studies, it asks what distinguishes good strategy from bad strategy, how circumstances can empower and constrain individuals, and whether we can identify strategic principles that endure across time.

This course looks at the international history of human rights from the Enlightenment to the present and considers how human rights ideas first emerged, how they evolved, and how they became so influential. Honors version available.