This course will be taught by Marina Maccari – Clayton, senior lecturer in history. Maccari- Clayton’s research focuses on international migration and globalization. Class will be held Thursdays from 9:40 – 10:30.

Course description:

This course approaches the study of the French Revolution using a role-playing format As leaders of major factions within the National Assembly (and the streets outside), students strive to create a constitution for a new France, amidst internal chaos and threats of foreign invasion. Will the king retain power? Will the priests of the Catholic Church obey the “general will” of the National Assembly or the dictates of the pope in Rome? Do traditional institutions and values constitute restraints on freedom and individual dignity or are they its essential bulwarks? Are slaves, women, and Jews entitled to the “rights of man”? is violence a legitimate means of changing society or of purging it of dangerous elements? In wrestling with these issues, students examine Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract and Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, among other texts.