SYLLABUS

Instructor: Ridvan Peshkopia
Department of Political Science
University of Kentucky
16th floor, Patterson Office Tower
Tel: 859-257-7929

Class schedule: Monday, Wednesday and Friday: 2.00-2.50 p.m.
Location: 233 CB.
Office hours and location: Monday, Wednesday and Friday: 1.00-2.00., 1651 POT. For students who, for emergency reasons or schedule clashes, cannot visit me in the scheduled office hours, arranging an appointment is recommended. You can do it by communicating with me via email.
E-mail address: ridvanpeshkopia@yahoo.com
Blog address: introtopoliticaltheory.blogspot.com

WELCOME TO POLITICAL THEORY! COURSE’S OBJECTIVES AND EXPECTATIONS
This course is divided in two parts: the first one focuses on political thought; the second, on political ideology.
Political thought. One can hardly find any other college course where the word knowledge in its classical meaning can be more appropriately used to describe the subject-matter than what political theory/philosophy tries to deal with. By touching base with the best of the political thought humanity has been able to conceive thus far, we will receive a basic understanding of how human society in general and politics in particular work. We will have an opportunity to analyze what the individual, the community and the state are and how they act and interact in building and consuming politics. Yet, in order to fully grasp such basic knowledge, we will need and learn some basic philosophical concepts that go beyond political philosophy and are applied in other realms of knowledge such as pure and applied science, and ethics. These concepts include theory (a modelic presentation of the world), epistemology (theory of knowledge), ontology (theory of existence), empiricism (theory of proof), metaphysics (theory of thought), and criticism (theory of criticism). From that string of knowledge, in the end of the semester you are expected to have mastered notions such as individual, private, public, community, state, freedom, modernity, and postmodernity.
Political ideology. Political ideology is often an application of the political thought. We can refer to this part of the course as an implementation of what we learned in the first part of it. Clearly the world does not work in such a simplistic way but hey, perhaps we are building a model here. Anyway, let us even formally build this course as a simplified mirror of the real world. Certainly many details will be left out, but this is a price to pay for grasping a wider and more complete view of the world in only one semester. This section of the course probes in some ideological notions such as liberalism, conservatism, communism, fascism, anarchism, feminism, nationalism, and globalization.

READINGS
Thiele, Leslie Paul (2004). Thinking Politics: Perspectives in Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Political Theory, 2nd edition. New York, London: Chatham House Publisher.
Wiser, James (1993). Political Theory: A thematic Inquiry. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
Love, Nancy S. (2006). Understanding Dogmas & Dreams: A Text, 2nd edition. Washington D.C.: CQ Press.
Love, Nancy S. ed. (2006). Dogmas & Dreams: A Reader in Modern Political Ideologies, 3rd edition. Washington D.C.: CQ Press.

ASSIGNMENTS AND EXAMS
All the assignments and exams for this class will be take-home. In the first half of the semester, there will be two take-home quizzes another one will be in the second part of the semester. The aim of these quizzes will be to assure that the readings have been done and the students are following the pace of the course. They will be assigned on Friday and will be due the following Monday. Each will count 10% of your final grade. The format of the quizzes will be as follows: You will receive 10 questions and need to answer only 5 of them for achieving the maximum evaluation. However, extra credits will be assigned to those who work on the rest of the questions. The questions will be such that a 200-words answer would be necessary to complete each of them.
A take-home midterm exam will be assigned according to the schedule mentioned in the syllabus. It counts 20% of your final grade. Its structure would be as follows: The exam is identical to the quizzes, except for the fact that the questions will be formatted in a way that would require 500 words rather than 200 words. You will receive an exam sheet with 10 questions where 5 answers will count as regular answers and any other answer on the top of them will be counted for extra credit evaluation.
A 2500-word essay is due according to the date scheduled in this syllabus. You will be asked to develop an essay about a concept or notion discussed in class. The subject-matter will be randomly chosen from a bowl as mentioned in the syllabus. The essay’s evaluation counts 20% of your final grade.
The final exam’s format will be identical in format and evaluation with the mid-term exam.

EXTRA CREDITS
You will continuously be encouraged to perform extra work in order for you to score some extra grades and shield yourselves from unhappy but probable setbacks in the final grade. I will often come to you with propositions for extra grades. Yet, your propositions for extra credit assignments will be welcomed.

EVALUATION
I especially evaluate the class attendance; it comes from my graduate school experience that the class is the best place to learn. Moreover, you have to write two take-home exams, one in the mid-term and the other during finals week. And finally, an essay will be required before you take your final exam. So, the evaluation will be as follows:
1. Class attendance and participation 10%
2. Quizzes 30%
3. Midterm 20%
4. Essay 20%
5. Final exam 20%
However, the letter grades will appear only in your transcripts, while this course’s grading will be in numerical grades. Following is the relationship between numerical grades and letter grades:
100-91 = A
90-81 = B
80-71 = C
70-61 = D
60-0 = E

EVALUATION CRITERIA
In evaluating your assignments, I will use these criteria:
1) How much you have answered the question and tackling the issue;
2) How much you have used class discussion in answering the question and discussing the issue;
3) How much you have used the textbooks and other assigned readings in answering the question and tackling the issue;
4) The language style and grammatical correctness.Assignment structural organization.

CLASS ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION
An enrollment appeal will be conducted in the beginning of each class. You are allowed to have two unjustified absence. After a third, you need to talk to me and present a valid reason of for the absence. Here is what the UK attendance policy suggests about the excused absences:
Excused Absences: S.R. 5.2.4.2 defines the following as acceptable reasons for excused absences:
1) serious illness;
2) illness or death of family member;
3) University-related trips;
4) major religious holidays;
5) other circumstances you find to be “reasonable cause for nonattendance.”
I recognize that there might be other cases to be considered, outside of the aforementioned ones. Yet, you need to talk to me concerning each of them.

CHEATING AND PLAGIARISM
Those who have taken my courses before might have noticed that I don’t stress much on this point. The reason for this negligence is that I was never able to realize why a student should cheat and/or plagiarize. For those who don’t know what plagiarism means, I suggest the following link: http://www.uky.edu/Ombud/Plagiarism.pdf; for those who don’t know what cheating means, I suggest to take the course Life 101. I do my best to provide you with all the facilities and ease needed for mastering the class material.
However, unfortunately, sometimes cheating and plagiarism happens. In order to prevent and combat these ugly and unlawful phenomena, the UK has a distinct policy that you can find at: http://www.uky.edu/USC/New/SenateRulesMain.htm andhttp://www.uky.edu/Ombud/. I am deeply committed to this policy.


TOPICS AND SCHEDULE
PART ONE: THE PURPOSE AND METHOD OF POLITICAL THOUGHT

Week 1: January 9, and 11.
Thinking Politics: Thiele, Chapter 1; Wiser, Chapters 1 and 2.

Week 2: January 14, 16 and 18.
Human nature: Thiele Chapter 2; Wiser, Chapters 4 and 5;

Week 3: January 21, 23 and 25.
Politics: Thiele, Chapter 3; Wiser, Chapters 10 and 11.

Week 4: January 28 and 30, and February 1.
Modernity and Postmodernity: Thiele, Chapter 4.

Week 5: February 4, 6, and 8.
Human conflict: Thiele, Chapter 5; Wiser, Chapter 6.

Week 6: 18, 20, and 22.
Statecraft: Thiele, Chapter 6; Wiser, Chapters 7, 8, and 9.


PART 2: POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

Week 7: February 25, 27, and 29.
Defining Political Ideology: Love, Chapter 1; Thiele, Chapter 7.

Week 8: March 3, and 5.
Liberalism: Love, Chapter 2; Love (reading), Part 1.
On March 5th you will receive your midterm exam sheet. It will be due the first day of class after the Spring break, Monday, March 17. You will also randomly pick from a bowl the topic of your essay; the essay is due on April 25th.

Week 9: March 17, 19, and 21.
Conservatism: Love, Chapter 3; Love (reading), Part 2.

Week 10: March 24, 26 and 28.
Socialism: Love, Chapter 4; Love (reading), Part 3.

Week 11: March 31, and April 2 and 4.
Anarchism and Fascism: Love, Chapter 5 and 6; Love (reading), Part 4 and 5.

Week 12: April 7, 9 and 11.
Feminism: Love, Chapter 7; Love (reading), Part 6.

Week 13: April 14, 16, and 18.
Environmentalism and Ecology: Love, Chapter 8; Love (reading), Part 7.

Week 14: April 21, 23, and 25.
Nationalism and Globalization: Love, Chapter 9 Love (reading), Part 8.
On April 25th you will receive your final exam sheet. It is due on May 2nd.

Have a great semester!