Here you’ll find course descriptions for most of the course I taught at the University of Oregon’s R. D. Clark Honors College, the University of Adelaide’s Discipline of History, and Quest University. Clicking on the course title will bring you to the full description of the courses, and, in some cases, will allow you to view one or more versions of the course syllabus.
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Question
Interdisciplinary, Quest University CanadaWelcome to your Question block. In the next few weeks, you will draw a blueprint for the rest of your Quest education. This may be exhilarating: having completed (or come close to completing) the requirements imposed upon you by the Foundation Plan, you are now at liberty to design your own education. This may also…
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Reason and Freedom
Division of Arts and Humanities, Quest University CanadaThis course emphasizes the foundations of the modern world. Reason and Freedom explores the self-conscious nature of modernity and its belief in reason, and explores the paradoxes of our position in history. It examines the tensions between science and religion, delves into the contradictions of freedom as understood by theologians, philosophers, and mere mortals, and…
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Revolutions
Division of Arts and Humanities, Quest University CanadaThis course seeks to provide a framework for understanding revolutions historically and comparatively. We will spend much of our time on the French Revolution before turning to the Russian Revolution. We will read a great deal, covering a range of perspectives and a host of issues along the way. We will move back and forth…
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Rhetoric
Division of Arts and Humanities, Quest University CanadaRhetoric is the art of persuasion, an art that has a long and noble tradition. Understanding the art of persuasion entails at least two things: one, understanding how the arguments made by others work; two, learning to make our own arguments better. To do these two things, we read (or watch, or listen to) the…
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Scholarship: War, Conflict, and History
Division of Arts and Humanities, Quest University CanadaWar has long played a central role in the human experience and the scholarship of history; indeed, it might be said that the first “scientific historian” was the Athenian historian Thucydides, author of the History of the Peloponnesian War. If war no longer takes pride of place in most university history departments, it nonetheless remains…
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Sites of History: France
Division of Arts and Humanities, Quest University CanadaThis course, taught in France, explores the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of modern France. What better way to understand the bohemian life of the Belle Époque than to walk up to the top of the Butte Montmartre? What better way to understand the impact of urban transit than to experience the Paris Métropolitain in all…
