About the Theme
This question concerns authority in all senses - legal, moral, religious, scientific, political, aesthetic, journalistic. Investigations might ask about "power,” but also about whom we choose to trust to guide us in making decisions and forming beliefs. This question may open onto thinking about a more even distribution of "power" in a globalized world, but may also aim to rethink the very idea of authority in the past, present, and future.
This question may explore claims that we are living through an age of radical destabilization of traditional bastions of authority (government, legacy news media, religions, universities, scientists). It may therefore take up concerns like “trust” or even “common sense.” It might engage work associated with “postmodernism” and responses to it, thinking about discourses as irreducibly material and intellectual phenomena.
In addition to large historical and conceptual articulations, this question may also guide our attention to specific and even highly contextual practices of constructing authority, including disciplinary authority in schools and universities. In this way, the question might invite a meta-question: how are we constructing authority when we ask this question in classes, at events, and in our conversations across campus?
Catalog Courses
LDST 101 Leadership and the Humanities (Peter Kaufman, Lauren Henley, David Wilkins, Kristin Bezio, Javier Hidalgo, Julian Hayter)
LDST 210 Justice and Civil Society (Lauren Henley, Thad Williamson, Ekrem Mus)
LDST 301 Native Peoples and the Supreme Court (David Wilkins)
LDST 305 Law, Native Sovereignty, and Treaty Rights (David Wilkins)
LDST 368 Leadership on Stage and Screen (Kristin Bezio)
LDST 369 Culture and Resistance (Kristin Bezio)
LDST 350 Killers & Cults (Lauren Henley)
LDST 450 Ethics (Jessica Flanigan, Javier Hidalgo, Terry Price)
JOUR 302 Public Affairs Reporting (Tom Mullen)
JOUR 304 Covering Elections (Tom Mullen)
ARTH121 Survey of Art from Prehistory to the Middle Ages (Dr. Agnieszka Szymańska)
ARTH210 Late Antique and Byzantine Art (Dr. Agnieszka Szymańska)
ENG 203 Children's Literature (Libby Gruner)
ENG 299 Reading & Writing Creative Nonfiction (Libby Gruner)
FYS 100 Why YA? Young Adult Literature & Social Change (Libby Gruner)
RHCS 104 Interpreting Rhetorical Texts (Achter)
RHCS 412 Rhetoric and Terrorism (Achter)
RHCS 100 Public Speaking (Achter, Hobgood, Wilkerson)
SDLC Self-Directed Language Learning (Michael Marsh-Soloway)
CLSC 302 Roman Art and Archaeology (Elizabeth Baughan)
CLSC 321 Archaeology of the Middle East (Elizabeth Baughan)
ENGL 204 Literature and Culture (Race, Slavery, and Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature) (Kevin Pelletier)
LAIS 432 Truth Lies: Fiction and Truth in Don Quijote (Aurora Hermida Ruiz)
LDST 306 Sex, leadership, and the evolution of human societies (Chris von Rueden)
HIST 299 U.S. Environmental History (Jillean McCommons)
ENVR 322 Global Climate Change (David Kitchen)
