This course offers an interdisciplinary approach to examine the major developments of European political thought with a focus to the ideas of a number of political thinkers in the modern era: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx. We begin with a brief introduction of the social transformations in the widely divergent historical contexts in Italy, England, France and Germany exploring the processes of social change that characterized modern foundations of political thought. After politicizing the terrains of engagement of modern political thinkers, attention turns to contextualize their political thought in their own historical setting. The objectives of the course are to introduce students to the history of political ideas in the Western political tradition from 1500-1900, and to offer them an interdisciplinary method to critically consider political theory in relation with social change in different historical contexts.

This NET paper is taught through lectures on Moodle and a forum on Moodle for each theorist. The forums are intended primarily for discussion of the ideas and arguments presented in the lectures and reading. They are intended to provide an opportunity for students to improve the important skills of developing and expressing their own ideas.

There are twelve pieces of assessment for six weeks:

six engagement exercises (%36),

four quote reviews (%24),

and two comparative essays (%20 each).

Students are expected to complete engagement exercises about the content of presentations each week, which are on Moodle. Engagement exercises will be multiple-choice questions (each %1) to be completed in the given time period after watching the lecture presentation. In addition to these, each week there will be quote reviews that all students are expected to post a comment (250 words) at -least four weeks out of six -regarding the quote given that week (each %6). In the middle (week III) and the last parts (week VI) of the paper, students must choose one of the essay questions and write a 1500-word comparative essay, briefly comparing and contrasting the thinkers and/or some key concepts. Comparative essay questions will be posted to Moodle for students to choose and plan their essays. Those who require help to plan their essays and develop their arguments can use the office hours to get feedback and further help before final submissions.

All of the assessments are required to be completed online in Moodle and every submission will be processed through Turnitin Plagiarism Detection. Students must be careful about the sources they use while quoting and citing. Long citations and quotations will not be counted inside the word limits while grading the submissions. More on how to cite the material to be used can be found in UoW Library Reference Style Guide.