Browse Hierarchy ULC237: Searching for Modernity: Political Thought from the Ancien Régime to the 19th Century

The module offers an overview of key intellectual figures and texts in French and Francophone political thought from the 18th to the 19th centuries, focussing on the period around the French revolution and its fall-out. Taking a historical approach, the module encourages students to situate ideas within their broader social and discursive context and grasp how these debates shaped the development of a number of contemporary political institutions and concepts. Students will gain an understanding of how and why ideological currents such as liberalism and socialism emerged across this period of crisis as intellectual actors sought to articulate new forms of social organisation. The module will explore the origins of notions like popular sovereignty and representative government, as well as feminist, racial, and social critiques of (and alternatives to) the liberal state and empire.