Past Classes

In the years that we’ve been active, we’ve been honored to be able to offer a host of compelling courses at JCI. Scroll through our “back catalog” and take a look at some of our previous offerings.

Advanced Literature
Instructor: Mikita Brottman, Spring 2013 and ongoing (limited to 10 students)

Age of Reform
Instructor: Rachel Donaldson, Summer 2014

American Criminal Justice and Prisons in Comparative Perspective
Instructor: Marc M. Howard
2.3 million Americans currently reside in jails and prisons, often under conditions of severe overcrowding, race-based segregation, and horrific violence. They are granted few educational opportunities or job training, in stark contrast to many European countries, which operate extensive rehabilitation programs that prepare inmates for their eventual release and reintegration into society. Yet even though prisoners and former prisoners (not to mention their family members) constitute a substantial portion of the American population, they are generally a powerless and forgotten group of people, with few rights or opportunities. This course will explore these issues from a comparative perspective.

Autobiographical Writing
Instructor: Joseph Hall, Fall 2013
This course is partially based on methodology developed for the University of Nebraska Summer Scholars Program.  Students are taught to view their opinions and stories cinematically, incorporating concepts such as analogy, metaphor, expressionism versus realism, semiotics, culturally literacy and mise en scene.  For  most assignments,  students are encouraged  to disregard rules of grammar, punctuation and fact, across the spectrum their written work, and to  instead, capture and share the color, shape and movement of pure, raw emotion.

Basic Statistics
Instructor: Lewis Lorton, Fall 2015 / Fall 2016
The world is measured, evaluated and planned with numbers and statistics. My goal in this class is not to teach people how to blindly manage sets of numbers but to help them understand how numbers are used, accumulated and compared to make knowledge. The class starts with basic concepts and then proceeds through descriptive statistics and probability, then ends up with simple kinds of hypothesis tests. In every situation, I try to relate the issues as much and often as possible to everyday use and misuse,

Big Questions
Instructor: Joshua A. Miller, Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter 2013
Is there a God? How can we know? Is there life after death? Are there miracles? What should we do? How shall we live? What are people for? Why is there suffering? Is happiness possible? Can there be goodness without God? In this course, we will explore the “the Big Questions.” We will seek to clarify, challenge, and ground our beliefs about right and wrong; what is and what we can know; meaning and beauty through the study of major subfields of philosophy within a historical context. Though we go through life with some provisional answer to each of these questions, they continue to trouble us all. In this course, we will attempt to deepen our answers to these questions, to reflect on alternatives, and to root out inconsistencies in our positions. This course meets every other Monday throughout 2013, and is open first to students of the Hannah Arendt Seminar.

Contemporary Violent Conflict
This course will examine contemporary global conflicts in order to explore debates surrounding politics, social movements, and our communities. We will rely on our own understandings and interpretations of the words and actions of political dissidents including armed guerrillas, protesters, ‘terrorists’, and those who defy all categories. Throughout the course we will review the histories of these conflicts and movements: their motivations, ideas, and methods. In doing so, we will explore the key question: ‘What is violence?’, and l discuss how this violence is experienced throughout our society. In order to answer this question we will read and discuss a variety of primary source documents—pieces written by the person or group who carried out the violence—which help provide a variety of perspectives. After reading these texts we hope to gain insight into what makes something violent, and why some individuals and groups choose violence as a strategy. This course will not only explore the violence of wars, but also the larger systems of violence in our own backyard.

Congo Wars
Instructor: Daniel Levine, Summer 2015

Criminal Justice
Instructor: Andrea Cantora, Summer 2014
This course will cover a range of criminal justice topics including: theories of crime, crime prevention, sentencing, rehabilitation, and prisoner reentry. Five class sessions will be joined with students from the University of Baltimore. These sessions will be modeled after the National Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program (see mission statement below). During these sessions students will engage in seminar style discussions about crime, prison reentry, and crime prevention. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is an opportunity for a small group of students from University of Baltimore and group of residents of the Jessup Correctional Institution to exchange ideas and perceptions about crme, prevention, and the reentry process. It is a chance for all participants to gain a deeper understanding of criminal justice through the marriage of theoretical knowledge and practical experience.

Criminal Justice Writing Workshop
Instructor: Andrea Cantora, Summer 2015
Five students from the spring 2014 Criminal Justice Issues course will participate in a summer writing project focused on developing individual and group articles on improving the criminal justice system. Student’s individual articles will be prepared for submission to the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons. The group article will be focused on the concept of “utopian prisons.” Students will be tasked with writing an article on whether prisons could ever be “utopian”, and if so what is required to make them more “utopian” (i.e., more effective and more humane). This article will be submitted to the Prison Journal.

Eichmann in Jerusalem
Instructor: Christian Golden, Summer 2015
German philosopher Hannah Arendt was witness to some of the worst perversions of 20th-century politics: world war, fascism and genocide. In this course we will explore her vital contributions to understanding some of the most troubling possibilities inherent in modern life. Our central text will be Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt’s close analysis of Adolf Eichmann, one of the leading Nazi organizers of the Holocaust. We will also read selections from other works by Arendt in order to better understand the view of human life and action underlying her diagnosis of what she famously called “the banality of evil.” Our guiding aim will be to engage critically and thoughtfully with Arendt’s view of politics and human nature with an eye to its continuing relevance for our own moral and political situation. Syllabus

Environmental Philosophy
Instructor: James Stanescu, Summer 2015
This course will look at recent work in environmental philosophy and ethics. In particular, we will focus on how ecological changes challenges our traditional ethical categories. We will read Joanna Zylinska‘s Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene, as well as several articles and chapters published the last few years. The course will begin with a short overview of current issues with the environment, before moving into a discussion of the philosophical.

Epistemology of Testimony
Instructor: Daniel Brunson, Summer 2013,
Almost all of what we commonly consider knowledge comes from the testimony of others. For example, I know that Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C because I have been told so by teachers and textbooks. And yet, testimony is also viewed with suspicion. That is, in addition to the usual concerns about human error and lying, many philosophers argue that all testimony is insufficient and unnecessary for knowledge. In this course, we will look at some classic characterizations of testimony, such as that of David Hume, as well as some contemporary authors, to better understand when, if ever, we should trust what others say.

Faith and Reason through the Ethics of Belief
Instructor: Daniel Brunson, Winter 2013
This course offers an introduction to questions of moral epistemology; that is, the intersection of doing and knowing and whether we can have knowledge of ‘moral facts’. We will address questions such as the nature of belief, whether we can control our beliefs, and what sort of responsibilities we have to acquire good beliefs. We will also explore the nature and role of evidence in belief-formation personally and in groups.

Free Will, Intention and Responsibility
Instructors: Rebecca Kukla, Bryce Huebner, and Dan Steinberg, Summer 2015.
This course will focus on the intersection of neuroscience, law, and responsibility.

Freedom and Human Nature
Instructor: Drew Leder
Are human beings free to choose their path in life? Or are we determined by our genes and the environment we grow up in? Is there a fixed human nature? If so, is it originally good? Or naturally aggressive and selfish? Can we choose who and what we want to be? Using brief excerpts from philosophies around the world–Western, Asian, African–we will discuss such fundamental philosophical issues. Students should do all readings, and come to all sessions, which will be every other Monday, 7-8:45, starting early February.

Games and Game Design
Instructors: Joshua Miller and Daniel H. Levine, Spring 2014
The purpose of this class is to explore the fundamental principles of games and game design. We will explore these principles in theory and practice, and work on games of our own! The course covers a lot of ground in a relatively brief period. We’ll be touching on different sorts of games (and, since we’re philosophers, occasionally asking “what is a game?” or “why do we play them?”) from simple games of chance, to storytelling/role-playing games. Check out the syllabus for more details.

Games for the Soul
Instructor: Drew Leder, Fall 2013
Based on a book of this name by Dr. Leder, this course involves spiritual exercises to foster gratitude, generosity, forgiveness, fulfillment.

History of Economic Thought
Instructor: Joshua Houston, Spring 2014

Inside Mindfulness
Instructor: Mark Lindley, Summer 2014, Summer 2015
“Inside Mindfulness” is a class for anyone who spends a significant part of their life inside institutions – whether workplaces, schools, prisons, even families. You will learn how to live more fully into your individual dignity as a human being as you live together with others. You will develop skills in anger and stress management to use while living and working inside the mental and physical walls that isolate both “inside” and “outside.” Topics will include physical, physiological, and mental aspects of human development from current neuroscience and ancient mind sciences. Each participant will be able to improve relationships to self, to others and to the institutions in which we all live.
Syllabus.

Into the Underworld
Instructor: Mikita Brottman, Fall 2012
The descent to the underworld is a common theme in world literature from ancient times to the present. On the journey to the underworld, all the hero’s attachments are stripped away, and he’s forced to wrestle with shadows. In the ancient Egyptian story of the underworld journey, for example, the hero encounters demons, strange creatures and mysterious gatekeepers to the Hall of Final Judgement, where he’s forced to confront his own soul. Psychologically, the underworld journey is a movement into the darkness of the unconscious and the night of the unknown self. The hero undergoes “a dark night of the soul” before returning to the conscious, daylight world (though not always unscathed). In some versions of the story, he does not return at all. In this course, we’ll be reading four works of fiction that deal with modern, psychological versions of the journey to the underworld.

Introduction to Formal Reasoning
Instructor: Daniel Brunson, Summer 2013
Much of logic concerns the formal structures of, and relationships among, sentences. In other words, knowing some general formulas and principles can help with many subjects, like how we can use addition on apples and orangutans. This course will introduce various concepts of deductive logic – truth table definitions for propositional connectives, deductively valid equivalences and inferences – through the practice of logic games and puzzles. In particular, we will see how things like sudoku and LSAT logic games utilize the same general
principles of valid reasoning.

Nonviolent Resistance to War
Instructor: Daniel H. Levine, Summer 2015
In this course, students will study the theory and practice of non-violent resistance and political action. We will use the War Resisters’ International’s Handbook for Nonviolent Campaigns as a primary text. The class will explore the advantages and disadvantages of nonviolent approaches to political change and resistance to war, the strategy and tactics of nonviolent action, and the principles of building nonviolent activist movements through a combination of discussion and exercises.

The Philosophy of Self
Instructors: Joseph Trullinger and Eyal Aviv, Summer 2015
For centuries, in ancient Greece, visitors to the famous temple at Delphi encountered an inscription that inspired a civilization: gnōthi seauton or “Know Thyself.” In this course we will focus on this ancient command. We will ask what exactly this “self” is and how we know it. We will read and discuss different perspectives on the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our existence. We find it fascinating that so many brilliant minds, past and future, understood the notion of self so differently. Some formulated theories of a soul, some saw it as a dynamic unfolding of our own essence, and others were skeptical about the ultimate existence of such a thing. We are excited to share and discuss with you texts of philosophers and scientists, Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, who shared our passion and explored one of the greatest questions that engage us throughout history.

Plato on Self-Knowledge, Society, and the Good Life
Instructor: Joshua Houston, Fall 2013
Plato’s dialogues, through the figure of their protagonist Socrates, exemplify philosophy in its most basic sense, as the method and practice of asking questions and exploring potential answers to them. The questions we will encounter in this course involve the attempt to come to a fuller understanding of ourselves, what kind of beings we are, as knowers, moral agents, and social animals. We will begin with an exploration of those dialogues that claim to cover the last days of Socrates’ life (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo), as he struggles with questions of his own understanding of himself and how he ought to live and die. We will then explore more deeply the relationships between knowledge and virtue (in the Meno), and close by looking at an extended philosophical response on the part of Socrates to a radical challenge to his worldview (in the Gorgias).

Political Analysis and Political Narrative
Instructor: Daniel H. Levine, Summer 2013
The way we understand how society ought to operate and the histories we tell about how society has operated get mixed up with each other. We tend to interpret the past in terms of our present ideas – we impose our moral codes on people who would have found them alien, we look for heroes and villains who remind us of our current struggles, and we often read the past as a prophecy of what is happening now. At the same time, we look to history to solve arguments we are having now about society, by finding past attempts to organize society in line with our ideals or others, and looking for lessons on what works and what does not. So, our approach to history is rarely if ever “pure,” and maybe it should not be – constructing philosophical theories of politics and telling political histories are two sides of how we try to make sense of our moral, social, and political world.

Postcolonial Literature
Instructor: Henry Schwarz, Summer 2014
Postcolonial Literature is a mix of fiction, film and social science-y things from four continents in the era of decolonization (post-1945).

Psychology of Everyday Life
Instructor: Mikita Brottman, Summer 2013
This will be a broadly comprehensive class presenting the basic fundamentals of psychology. It will focus on human behavior, how the mind works, and the ways it can go wrong. The aim of the course is for you to understand your own and other peoples’ behavior, and to make sense of the complexities of human interactions. We’ll cover basic brain anatomy, the thinking process, personality, the theorists and contributions of Freud, and many other subjects. The goal of the course is to help you better understand yourself and other people, and to put this knowledge into practice.

Roots of the Civil Rights Movement
Instructor: Rachel Donaldson
In this class we will examine the ideas that influenced the modern civil rights movement in the US. By reading the writings of key political activists from the late 19th century through the 1940s, we will explore the long history of the struggle for racial equality. In addition to the movement itself, we will examine how the push for civil rights and racial justice influenced and altered the larger social, political, economic, and cultural trends in American society.

Social History of Underground Music
Instructor: Christian Golden, Summer 2014
In this course we will take a selective look at the history of American underground music. We will explore musical traditions that place great value on creative independence—especially the freedom of the individual and her community to define and pursue their own vision of what things are like and how they should be. The traditions we will examine include punk rock and its aesthetic offspring, hardcore, as well as heavy metal and rap, hip-hop culture and go-go music.

Soul Food: Stories to Nourish the Spirit
Instructor: Drew Leder, Spring 2014
Based upon a book by this name, we will read and discuss inspirational stories, both ancient and modern. These are drawn from different cultures and spiritual traditions, but reveal universal truths about the human condition. We will use these stories to reflect on our own lives: Where have we come from? Where are we going? What life are we meant to lead?

Stoic Ethics
Instructor: – Christian Golden, Summer 2013
In this course we will explore a rich and influential, ancient Greek philosophical perspective on human living: Stoicism.  The Stoics grappled with issues of practical concern to every human person.  These issues include the management of the emotions, especially anger and aggression; the fear of death; sexuality; the role of reason and virtue in happiness; and whether and how a happy life is possible for human beings in a world where we seem vulnerable to every sort of natural and man-made misfortune. Our aim in this course is to deepen and sharpen our ability to think through these everyday questions of what a worthwhile life must be like given the world and human nature as we find it.
Syllabus

Thinking Between Past and Future
Instructor: Joshua Miller Summer-Fall 2012
In this course, we explored this task of thinking in the present moment through essays by the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt. We read her essays “What is Freedom?”, “What is Education?”, and On Violence (as well as  C.L.R. James‘ Every Cook Can Govern) to prepare for her book The Human Condition, a study of the via activa, human life as it is lived – and what new ways of life are opened (and old ones foreclosed) in the modern age of technology and bureaucracy. Students discussed the way that Arendt divides human life in (repetetive, meaningless) labor, (creative, productive) work, and (unpredictable, political) action, and were encouraged to write short essays on how Arendt’s themes related to their own lives.

Topics in the Humanities,
Instructor: Mikita Brottman (and weekly guests), Spring 2016
Each week, this course will address a different topic in the humanities. The humanities encompass a range of different subjects, including literature, history, philosophy, religion, creative writing, art history, music, art, anthropology, and languages. We will not cover all these subjects in this course, but will cover an indicative number. Guests are professors in the Department of Humanistic Studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and will be discussing their teaching interests, their research, their writing or their artistic or professional practice.

Touchstones Project
Instructor: Mikita Brottman  Fall 2012
The Touchstones Project is a program that uses structured discussions of excerpts from classic pieces of literature, history, philosophy, and art to encourage students to develop fundamental learning skills. Participants in Touchstone discussions improve their listening, speaking, reasoning, comprehension, collaborative problem solving, and teamwork abilities.  Since the 1990s, Touchstones has been active in prisons (as well as more traditional school environments), leading discussion programs aimed at helping inmates develop deeper self-reflection on their values and actions, as well as interpersonal and critical-thinking skills they will need when they leave prison.

Violence
Instructors: Joshua Miller and Daniel Levine,  Spring 2014
Violence is complex and problematic phenomenon. It pervades many human interactions – even when we are not using it, it may lurk in our police forces, our militaries, the gap between the rich and the poor, our willingness to create a toxic environment, or even the everyday ways in which we inflict stress on each other.
This class will explore violence from a number of angles – philosophical, psychological, and historical. We will discuss the nature of violence, its causes, its possible social uses, and how to address it. Along the way, we hope to hone students’ skills at reading sometimes-difficult texts and articulating their views orally and in writing. Syllabus

World Politics
Instructor: Marc M. Howard, Fall 2015
Syllabus

Writing Style and Structure
Instructor: Mikita Brottman, Fall 2012, Fall 2013
The beauty and flexibility of the English language owe a lot to its complex grammar and immense, ever-changing vocabulary. Through a study of grammatical rules and stylistic principles and an examination of style, this course will help you to develop an understanding of what makes an effective writing style, and to incorporate the lessons from this class to your own writing. We will examine English grammar and syntax to understand the boundaries in our use of the language and the opportunities the knowledge of grammatical rules presents to us.

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