POLITICAL SCIENCE 320/BIOS 320X: BIOPOLITICS AND HUMAN NATURE
Fall, 2008
Larry Arnhart
Office: Zulauf 404
Office hours: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:00-4:00, other times by appointment
Email: larnhart@niu.edu
TEXTS
Larry Arnhart, Darwinian Conservatism (Imprint Academic, 2005)
Larry Arnhart, Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature (SUNY
Press, 1998)
John West,
2006)
James Watson, DNA: The Secret of Life (Knopf, 2003)
Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes (John Hopkins
University Press, 1998)
Allan Mazur, Biosociology of Dominance and Deference (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)
Louann Brizendine, The
Female Brain (
GRADING
The final grade for this course will be based on the grades for journal writing (30% for journal entries #1-6 and journal responses #1-6, 30% for journal entries #7-13 and journal responses #7-13), for class participation (15% for the first half of the course, 15% for the second half), and for a final argumentative essay (10%). Grades for the first half of the course will be given out on October 21.
Journal Writing
A journal entry will be due every Tuesday
at the beginning of class. Each journal
entry should be at least 600 words long (or roughly 2 double-spaced typed
pages). Each entry must have your
name, the date, and the number of the entry on the top of the first page. They must be typed. They must be stapled. All journal writing must be submitted in
class. Submissions outside of class will
not be accepted. No submissions by
e-mail will be accepted. No late
submissions will be accepted. No
submissions at the end of class will be accepted.
You will be assigned to a journal group with two
other students. You must bring three
copies of your entry or response to class--one copy for the instructor and
two copies for the members of your group.
Of course, you should keep the original for yourself.
The journal entry should be a statement of your
thoughts about the reading assignment for that week. The purpose is to show your intellectual
struggle with the material. Do you
understand what the author is saying? If
so, do you agree or disagree? Why? If you do not understand what the author is
saying, what is it that you find confusing?
Intellectual struggle requires a logical
analysis of the arguments. What is
the issue? What position is the author
taking on that issue? What arguments
does the author develop to support that position? What are the strengths and
weaknesses in those arguments? Are the arguments ultimately persuasive or not?
Those are the kind of questions you must consider in analyzing the
arguments. You should not fill up your journal entry by merely summarizing,
paraphrasing, or quoting from the reading.
Hey, you’ve got a brain. Use it!
You are free to introduce whatever you find
pertinent--including ideas from your personal experience and ideas from other
classes you have taken--whatever helps you to make sense of the issues raised
in the readings. Integrating ideas from
our class discussions into your writing is important. Again, the purpose is to write an informal
statement of your thoughts about the reading assignments that show your intellectual
struggle with the material and with the questions raised by that material.
The reading for each week will suggest many
issues that might deserve comment. But generally it is best for your journal
entry to concentrate on just one issue that you can develop in two pages.
You will receive two grades for your journal
writing. On October 21 you will
receive your grades for the first half of the semester. Your grades for the second half of the
semester will come at the end of the semester.
To deal with emergencies (illness and so on), you
will be permitted to miss one journal entry and one set of journal responses
without any penalty. But missing more than that will lower your
grade.
Journal responses will be due every Thursday
at the beginning of class. Each
response should have your name, the number of the response, the date, and the
name of the person to whom you are responding.
Each should be typed. Every
Thursday, you will turn in two responses, and each response must
be at least 300 words long (or roughly 1 double-spaced typed page). Like the journal entries, you must bring
three copies--one for the instructor and two for the members of your journal
group. If a member of your journal group
does not give you an entry, you should turn in a note indicating that you
cannot write a response because you have not received an entry.
The journal responses will be your written
responses to the journal entries of the two other people in your group. So each Thursday you will come to class with
two responses of at least one page each for the two members of your journal
group. The purpose of the journal
response is to intellectually engage your fellow students. How does their handling of the reading
assignment compare with yours? What did
they see that you did not see? Sometimes
you will disagree. But don't be too
negative. Even if you disagree with a
journal entry, try to find some way to help that fellow student think through
the issues. You want to sustain a lively
intellectual exchange with your fellow students in which everyone learns
something from the exchange. You want to
struggle together in thinking through the issues.
If you do not receive a journal entry from a
member of your journal group, you must turn in a note indicating that you
cannot write a response because you did not receive an entry from that person.
The grading for the journal writing will
be determined by how well you obey Arnhart's
Ten Commandments:
1. Thou
shalt turn in all your journal writing (of the required length) at the
beginning of each class.
2. Thou
shalt show some logical analysis of the texts that goes beyond merely summarizing
or quoting from the texts.
3. Thou
shalt avoid errors in spelling, diction, punctuation, and grammar.
4. Thou
shalt write journal responses that seriously engage the journal entries from
the other group members.
5. Thou shalt write on one or two major topics in
each journal entry rather than writing superficially about many topics.
6. Thou
shalt organize your writing into coherent paragraphs.
7. Thou shalt occasionally show how the readings
for one week relate to the readings for previous weeks.
8. Thou shalt develop your own line of reasoning
about politics over the course of the semester in response to the readings and
the class discussions.
9. Thou shalt take clear positions on the
controversies in this class and support those positions with evidence and
argumentation.
10. Thou
shalt regularly probe the deeper implications of the issues raised in the
reading and class discussions beyond what is clear on the surface.
To earn a "C," students must obey
commandments 1-4. To earn a "B,"
students must obey commandments 1-8. To
earn an "A," students must obey all 10 commandments. Those students failing to obey commandments
1-4 will receive a "D" or "F." Anyone who commits plagiarism—using someone
else's words without putting them within quotation marks—will automatically
receive a final grade of "F" for the entire course.
Class Participation
You are expected to attend class and contribute
to class discussions. High grades for
class participation will go to those who regularly attend class and who
regularly contribute to class discussions in an instructive way. You may miss two classes without
penalty. Missing more will be
penalized. You are expected to be in
class on time. Those who arrive late to class more than two times will be severely
penalized. Anyone whose cell phone rings
in class will be whacked!
A grade of "C" for class participation
requires regular class attendance (missing no more than two classes). A grade of "B" for class
participation requires regular class attendance and contributing to class
discussions at least once a week. A
grade of "A" for class participation requires regular class
attendance and contributing to class discussions at almost every class meeting.
Final Argumentative Essay
The final argumentative essay should be
15,000-2,000 words long (roughly 6-8 double-spaced pages). The topics in this course are
controversial. For this essay, you
should take up one of these controversial topics and defend your position on
that controversy. To do that, there are
four requirements. (1) State the
question at issue. (2) State your answer
to the question. (3) Support your answer
with at least three arguments—three good reasons for believing that your answer
is correct. (4) Respond to at least two
of the major objections to your answer.
Anyone who commits plagiarism—using someone else's words without putting
them within quotation marks—will automatically receive a final grade of
"F" for the entire course.
This final essay is due no later
than 12 noon on May 8 at the professor's office (Zulauf 404).
ASSIGNMENTS
Aug 26: Introduction
Aug 28: No class
Sep 2: Arnhart, Darwinian Conservatism, pages 1-143
Sep 4: continued
Sep 9: West, pages 9-103
Entry #1
Sep 11: Response #1
Sep 16: Watson, chapters 1-3
Entry #2
Sep 18: Response #2
Sep 23: Watson, chapters 7-10
Entry #3
Sep 25: Response #3
Sep 30: Watson, chapters 11-13 and Coda
Entry #4
Oct 2: Response #4
Oct 7: de Waal, pages 1-75
Entry #5
Oct 9: No class
Oct 14: de Waal, pages 77-215
Response #5
Entry #6
Oct 16: Response #6
Oct 21: Mazur, pages 1-92
Entry #7
Oct 23: Response #7
Oct 28: Mazur, pages 93-167
Entry #8
Oct 30: Response #8
Nov 4: Brizendine, pages 1-116
Entry #9
Nov 6: Response #9
Nov 11: Brizendine, pages 117-187
Anne Fausto-Sterling, "The Five Sexes," at http://bms.brown.edu/faculty/f/afs/fivesexesprnt.pdf
Entry #10
Nov 13: Response #10
Nov 18: Arnhart, Darwinian Natural Right, pages 6-121
Entry #11
Nov 20: Response #11
Nov 25: Arnhart, Darwinian Natural Right, pages 123-160
Entry #12
Nov 27: No class (Thanksgiving)
Dec 2: Arnhart, Darwinian Natural Right, pages 161-275
Response #12
Entry #13
Dec 4: Response #13
Dec 8: final essay due at the professor's office (Zulauf 404), no later than 12 noon.