General Information

General Information

Contact Information

Professor:: Abe Stone (abestone@ucsc.edu)
Push notiﬁcation:: Notify Abe
Website:: https://people.ucsc.edu/~abestone/courses
Zoom class meeting:: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/99178670205?pwd=b09FdzFQUlVCTDN4aFFzQ1gyUEFkQT09
Zoom oﬃce hours:: Mon. 11am–noon; Tues. 2:00–3:00pm

Course Requirements

Two short papers (2–3 pages), due Wednesday, February 3 and Wednesday, February 17 (each worth 25% of the ﬁnal grade).

One longer paper (6–8 pages) (worth 50% of the ﬁnal grade), due Wednesday, March 17.

The paper assignments are already available on-line, and are links to them from this syllabus (see above, also in the Readings section on the appropriate date) as well as from my main course page and on the Canvas site. I will discuss the assignments in class when the due date draws near. You can ﬁnd answers to some commonly asked questions about my assignments and grading in my FAQ.

Papers are to be handed in, as attachments, via the “Assignments” tool on Canvas. Please submit in MSWord format or in a format easily convertible to MSWord (e.g., Open Oﬃce, plain text, or RTF). The system will accept late submissions, but late papers may not receive full credit. The system is not set up to allow resubmissions: once you press the “submit” button, it will not let you change your response. If, however, you mistakenly submit something and want to change it, please contact me and I can make an exception.

All assignments are due by 11:55pm on the due date.

Please do not plagiarize. If you do and I catch you, you will receive no credit for the assignment and may fail the course, and you will also be subject to “disciplinary sanctions” from the University. (In contrast: if you hand in a paper consisting mostly of quotes from or paraphrases of other sources you have consulted, properly cited, you will not get a good grade — a good paper will contain your own interpretations and thoughts — but you will not fail, either.) If you have any questions about what plagiarism is or how to avoid it, you can ask me, or consult the resources listed on the Library website.[1]https://guides.library.ucsc.edu/citesources/plagiarism. For possible consequences of plagiarism, see the Academic Misconduct Policy.[2]https://www.ue.ucsc.edu/academic_misconduct.

I understand that conditions may be diﬃcult, thanks to the continuing pandemic, and will be ﬂexible about due dates, etc., if necessary. But please try to hand in work on time if you possibly can.

There will be live Zoom lectures at the scheduled course time. Live attendance at these is not required (in general, I never require attendance at my lectures), but I highly advise you to attend if possible. It will be diﬃcult for me to teach if there is no live audience at all. However, all lectures will also be recorded and made available for viewing later (on YouTube). Links to the recorded lectures will appear on this syllabus as they are put up.

Texts

Hobbes, Leviathan: (Hackett, 1994) (ISBN: 0872201775).
Older editions are available on Google Books and Wikisource, among other places, and there is a LibriVox recording in two parts: books I and II and books III and IV.
Locke, Second Treatise of Government: (Hackett, 1980) (ISBN: 978-0915144860).
Older editions of the Two Treatises of Government are available on Google Books (the Second Treatise begins on p. 187) and LibriVox (the Second Treatise begins with section 15); the Second Treatise is also available on Wikisource.
Rousseau, Basic Political Writings: (Hackett, 2012) (ISBN: 1603846735).
The Discourse on Inequality is available (in diﬀerent translations) on Google Books and Wikisource and there is also a LibriVox recording. Likewise for the Social Contract: Google,Books; Wikisource; LibriVox.
Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: (Dover Thrift, 1996) (ISBN: 978-0486290362).
Older editions of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman are available on Google Books and Wikisource and there is also a LibriVox recording.

The above texts can be ordered and/or purchased as e-books from the Bay Tree Bookstore, and are also available online via the UCSC Library. Other readings will be available online (either via public link or on Canvas).

This document, and all other instructor-generated material in this course, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.