This course will explore the theory and practice of rhetoric in ancient Greece and Rome and the ways in which classical rhetoric has been adapted in modern American verbal art. From Gorgias and Demosthenes to Lincoln and Douglass, to Ida B. Wells and Fannie Lou Hamer, we will consider what makes individual speeches noteworthy in their local, historical contexts, as well as placing them in a larger rhetorical tradition. Throughout, we will analyze the role of ideologies of gender, class, race, nationality, religion, and sexuality in the construction of the rhetorical subject.

An examination of the moral principles governing love and sex. Questions to be addressed include: Do we ever owe it to someone to love him or her? Do we owe different things to those we love? Do we owe it to a loved one to believe better of him than our evidence warrants? What is consent, and why is it morally significant? Is sex between consenting adults always permissible, and if not, why not? Are there good reasons for prohibiting prostitution and pornography? Everyone has opinions about these matters. The aim of the course is to subject those opinions to scrutiny.

This is a required course for the ten Graduate Prize Fellows (GPFs) in the University Center for Human Values. It is expected that the GPFs register for the course in both the fall and spring semesters of the year they are GPFs. The course has three central goals. First, the seminar is designed to support students' dissertation work while providing special aid to the human values aspect of the dissertation. Second, the seminar has an intensive focus on in-person academic performance skills. Third, the seminar aims to help graduate students to work toward the academic job market.

Filmmaking is a mural art. Due to the contemporary ubiquity of screens, our physical environment is increasingly eclipsed in the human experience. Yet vernacular filmmaking does not simply replace our physical nature, rather lets it emerge just as terroir wines reveal the natural environmental factors of winemaking without industrial tempering. Less industrial, more poetic film production can teach us a more respectful relation to our environment. Together with guest professors and filmmakers, we will study the interface of environmental and film studies through examples from masterpieces of cinema and our own short research film exercises.

In the twentieth century, Europe underwent a range of wrenching social and political upheavals that brought into question received truths about subjectivity, the nature of society, the forms and purpose of politics, the role of religion, the relationship between the sexes, and the place of Europe within the wider world. Over the course of the semester, we will study a range of intellectual movements--Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, critical theory, existentialism, structuralism, and postmodernism--examining how European thinkers responded to the historical events happening around them.

A survey of major problems and developments in twentieth century metaethics, from G.E. Moore to the present.

This course examines ethical tradeoffs that arise in environmental policy making. We begin by discussing various aspects of the environment that could give it value: abiotic features, non-sentient organisms, animals, species, biodiversity, ecosystems, existing humans, and future humans. The second half of the course explores how individuals and groups should go about protecting the most valuable aspects of the environment. Particular topics include: geoengineering, genetic engineering, family planning, carbon offsetting, global climate policy and inequality, endangered species, invasive species, land restoration, and space exploration.

A study in metaethics, this course will consider what types of explanations are possible of ordinary evaluations and moral views. Students will look at historical and contemporary philosophical explanations and consider how plausible they are, what sort of evidence might be relevant to them, and what their normative implications might be.

What kind of public architecture is appropriate for a democracy? Should public spaces and buildings reflect democratic values - such as transparency and accessibility - or is the crucial requirement for democratic architecture that the process of arriving at decisions about the built environment is as participatory as possible? Is gentrification somehow un-democratic? The course will introduce students to different theories of democracy, to different approaches to architecture, and to many examples of architecture and urban planning from around the world, via images and films. Might include a field trip to New York City.

The seminar explores the political theory of international human rights. We will ask some philosophical questions about these rights. For example: Are human rights really a kind of right? How are human rights related to the "natural rights" of the Western political tradition? What is the moral basis of human rights? Are human rights best understood as points of agreement among the world's moral cultures? How should we decide which rights are properly considered human rights? We will try to answer these questions through critical discussions of contributions to the philosophical literature about human rights of the last few decades.

This course examines political thinkers who profoundly shaped normative thinking about politics in Indian, Islamic, African and Chinese contexts. The course will examine non-Western ideas of modernity, and justified forms of moral and political order. It will shed new light on key ideas of modern political thought: rights, justice, nationalism, identity, violence, perfectionism, democracy and power. The thinkers in this course such as Gandhi, Iqbal, Ambedkar, Qutub, Fanon, Cesaire, Mao and others, not only contribute to political theory. Their arguments also define fault lines in contemporary politics.

American law protects racist hate speech, pornography, and (much) lying. Other countries permit more restrictions on harmful speech, should we? Or will that undermine truth-seeking, political competition, and other values? Should speech be regulated instead by social norms, social media companies, and universities? Is "cancel culture" a problem? And what should we - as political communities and universities - honor and memorialize? How should we balance recognition of heritage and inclusion of people from diverse cultures and historically marginalized groups? Seminars will include debates. Active weekly participation required of all.

The goal of this course is to examine different ways of thinking about God and humanity in the Roman Catholic intellectual tradition, focusing on the Spanish world. We will draw on four figures: St. Theresa of Avila, Francisco Suarez, Jon Sobrino, and Gustavo Guttiérez. We will first examine their views about the nature of humanity, next about the nature of God, and finally about how the two relate, with special attention to the issue of seeming divine indifference to the suffering of the innocent.

The course begins with the intertwined history of Muslims in America and America itself. We will then apply that foundation to topics in contemporary Muslim American life - for example, authority in mosques, fashion and coolness, and representation in movies. Students will encounter primary as well as secondary sources. For example, students will read an 1831 autobiography of an enslaved Muslim named Omar ibn Said and analyze a Chicago-based Ahmadi newspaper from the 1920s. We will use a range of media, including film and material culture, to emphasize the varieties of Muslim experience in America.

This course takes a close look at the foundational texts and critical concepts in the discipline of sociology, from the 19th century classics to contemporary theorists who have inspired important research agendas. Our two main goals will be to a) engage critically with authors and ideas and b) to develop your own 'sociological eye' and theoretical skills. Key authors will include Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Dubois, Schutz, Goffman, Bourdieu, Foucault, Butler and Latour. We will put these authors in their historical contexts and also ask how they can be used now to interpret contemporary issues and events.