Political Science

[full disclosure that this posting is "live" so to speak; i hope to edit and add onto it once we've had our class discussion, and i've done some more of my own legwork. think of this as a hybrid essay/lesson plan]

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Below is a two-page overview of Tocqueville's argument that I delivered to my Deep Springs students a few years ago while we were reading selections from Democracy in America. I've also attached my own set of notes from graduate school -- a rough outline of the entire argument. (Both have page number references to the Mansfield and Winthrop University of Chicago Press edition; I didn't have you buy this because we're only reading the first volume.)

I.

I'm musing on this passage from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and I'd like to start with some free writing in response to this:

"There is no other country in the world where the law speaks so absolute a language as in America or where the right to apply it is divided among so many hands." (Goldhammer, trans., p. 80)

This seems especially poignant and compelling to me after our experience together on Thursday Friday afternoons. I'd like to write about this for ten minutes and then split up into small groups to talk about what we've written.

II.

Experimental Essay Schedule

9/14

Keires

Rosa

Riley

9/21

Meera

Madison

Abby

Joie

9/28

Sula

Han

Shirah

Farida

10/19

Tong

Rhett

Sylvia

Julia