| Abstract: | ACE 016, Social Sciences Seminar II, a course in the curriculum of Adult
Collegiate Education, is described in Queens CollegeХs Undergraduate Bulletin
as follows: ТA continuation of the study of the historical development of
Western civilization from the Reformation to modern times, through an analysis
of sources, both original and secondary. In addition to the perspectives of
the older, well-established disciplines of history and philosophy, the course
will draw upon the newer social sciences: economics, sociology, and political
science.У
ТA continuationУ above refers to the fact that ACE 016 is the second
course in a two-course sequence of courses, the first of which is ACE 015. A
proposal that ACE 015 be approved as a PLAS course is being submitted
separately.
In line with the description, instructors in ACE 016 typically assign,
first, chapters in a history of Western civilization that deal with the
Reformation, the commercial revolution, the rise of national states, the
scientific revolution, the Enlightenment (including the American Revolution),
the French Revolution, Napoleon, the industrial revolution, currents of thought
in the early nineteenth century (such as romanticism, conservatism, liberalism,
radicalism, socialism, and nationalism), the revolutions and counterrevolutions
in nineteenth-century Continental European states, currents of thought in the
middle and later nineteenth century (such as realism in art and literature,
positivism, Darwinism, Marxism, anarchism, and feminism), the unifications of
Italy and Germany, and the rise of extreme nationalism leading to World War I.
(This is as far into Тmodern timesУ as instructors in ACE 016 usually find
it feasible to get, though some occasionally try to get as far as the eve of
World War II.)
In the second place, also assigned, in whole or in significant part, will be
pertinent sources both primary and secondary, in history, philosophy,
sociology, political theory, social psychology, and economics, such as the
following: WeberХs Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,
HobbesХs Leviathan, LockeХs Second Treatise of Civil Government,
RousseauХs Social Contract, MillХs On Liberty and On the Subjection of
Women, FreudХs Civilization and Its Discontents, and HeilbronerХs Worldly
Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (from
Adam Smith to Keynes and Schumpeter). Finally, written reports (one of them
also to be presented orally in class) will be assigned on two books, one
historical and the other (not historical but otherwise) socially scientific or
philosophical, selected by the student from lists of alternatives. |
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