HIST 1955

HIST 1955

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2017-2018.

Anarchism. What is it good for? A political philosophy and approach to social organization that arose simultaneous with other grand "-isms," anarchism, perhaps more than any other idea and practice, has been condensed down by its critics and observers into a vague set of often contradictory caricatures. Is 'it' characterized by bohemian communities of nihilists, their rebellion culturally innovative but politically impotent, book-ended by Friedrich Nietzsche and Johnny Rotten; or is 'it' individualist libertarians who walk in the ideological footsteps of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman rather than Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin; or, most famously, is 'it' a murky underworld of conspiratorial bomb throwers, held together less by bonds of solidarity than by a commitment to violence? This course provides some relief from such limited and constraining perspectives by taking anarchism seriously as a lived tradition of direct, non-hierarchical democracy.

When Offered Fall.

Distribution Category (HA-AS)
Course Subfield (HNU)

View Enrollment Information

Syllabi: none
  •   Regular Academic Session.  Choose one lecture and one discussion.

  • 4 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • 16579 HIST 1955   LEC 001

  • 16580 HIST 1955   DIS 201

  • 16581 HIST 1955   DIS 202

  • 16582 HIST 1955   DIS 203

  • 16583 HIST 1955   DIS 204