I’m about to teach an Introduction to Political Philosophy course for the second time. Last time around I used an adaptation of Robin James’ Social and Political Philosophy syllabus, which had a ton of great material but proved to be a bit much for my students. So I’ve more or less rewritten the whole course to go much more slowly through texts and topics. I’m planning to open with some conversations about race, gender and class as the three categories of analysis we’ll be using for thinking about how societies are organised, and then we’ll explore some key themes via reading and discussing some key political philosophers, as follows:
WEEK 1. Introduction to Political Philosophy
WEEK 2. The social contract: Thomas Hobbes
WEEK 3. The sexual contract: Carol Pateman
WEEK 4. The racial contract: Charles Mills
WEEK 5. Private Property: John Locke
WEEK 6. Communism: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
WEEK 7. ENRICHMENT WEEK
WEEK 8. Freedom: John Stuart Mill
WEEK 9. Resistance: Frantz Fanon
WEEK 10. Liberty: Robert Nozick
WEEK 11: Control: Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Paul B Preciado
WEEK 12: Topic selected by the class
Thanks to everyone who chipped in when I was planning the first iteration of this course; I went back over all the comments this time around and found them super helpful. Because I’ll be teaching a mixture of students doing Politics and PPE as well as some of our own students taking Philosophy, Religion and Ethics, I’ll be teaching a class of around 60, by far the biggest group I’ve ever taught. I’m planning to experiment with Nearpod to see if that will let me keep some meaningful element of student interaction in my classes, but if anyone has any tips for managing a group that size (we’ll be stuck in a lecture-style theatre just for added barriers to small group discussion) etc, I’m all ears! PO1103 PPE1001 S2 Handbook 2017-2018, for those who are interested.
An und für sich 
I think there’s a surprisingly large amount of students who would get more out of the lecture-hall style than small groups.
I don’t know, I feel like the ones who like being lectured to are more likely to be the more able ones, who will also be the ones who also get more out of the reading