ASTK18242U The Rise and Fall of Utopian Thinking

The objective of the course is to enable the students to:

Knowledge

• Gain knowledge of the main approaches in the utopian tradition of political theory.
• Understand and explain main divisions and developments in the utopian tradition of political theory within their historical context

Skills

• Evaluate the validity of the various theorists’ arguments.
• Analyze key trends, tensions and contradictions in utopian thinking.
• Write and present in a concise and clear manner.
• Develop a coherent arguments

Competences

• Apply the theories to discussions about our political world broadly understood. 
• Combine and synthesize the ways in which the approaches studied envision utopia and utopian thinking.
• Reflect critically on and across different theories, styles of argumentation and historical periods.

Alignment between learning outcomes and teaching activities

• Teaching activities will be tailored to facilitating students’ attainment of the knowledge, skills and competences described in the previous section. Teaching activities will be (roughly) equally divided between lectures, guest lectures and plenum discussion on the one hand, and group activities, student presentations, mini-conferences, etc. on the other. In groups, students will train their ability to evaluate arguments and to develop coherent arguments of their own.
• In lectures, guest lectures, and plenum discussion, the focus will be on advancing the students’ knowledge of the main approaches in the utopian tradition of political theory and to understand and account for the divisions and developments in this tradition. The assigned literature will be discussed in class, difficult passages and arguments will be unpacked and explicated, and texts will be situated with reference to other texts in the assigned literature, in order to account for the divisions and developments throughout the utopian tradition. Moreover, each class will end with an introduction to the literature assigned to the following class, and depending on the level of difficulty of the texts in question, students will be equipped with more or less comprehensive reading guides, including guidance on the important points and passages on which to focus attention, the historical context of the text and its author, an account of the structure of difficult texts, and so on.
• In student presentations (ranging from poster presentations over jigsaw techniques to mini-conference presentations), students will train their ability to present and analyze trends, tensions and contradictions in the literature, to combine and synthesize different approaches, to critically reflect on the literature and its historical context, and to apply the theories and arguments to aspects of contemporary political life. Moreover, the task of each group activity will be to produce a clearly pre-specified product, which will further students’ abilities to develop and present products (posters, mind-maps, abstracts, role-play, etc.) of their group activities in front of other groups or the whole class.