This course will explore diverse articulations of what democracy was, what it is, and what it could be. It takes its cue from Sheldon Wolin's suggestion that in political theory, putting forward a vision means mobilizing the imagination to illuminate otherwise hidden phenomena and communicate the theorist's values. The visions of democracy that we will analyze in the course were written in (or about) a wide range of time periods; center a variety of locations, including Latin America, Europe, North America, and South Asia; were expressed in different genres, from poetry to academic political theory; and present different valuations of democracy, from conservative critical to romantic laudatory. |