The Aspen Institute
Wye Faculty Seminar
Citizenship in the American and Global Polity
July 20-26, 2013
Aspen Wye River Conference Center
Table of Contents
Opening Evening
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “A Curse for a Nation”
Session I:
Our Founding Faiths
John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity”
The Declaration of Independence
Preamble of the Constitution of the United States
Abigail and John Adams, Selected Letters
Seneca Falls Declaration
David Walker, Walker’s Appeal
Abraham Lincoln, First and Second Inaugural Addresses
Frederick Douglass, “Do Not Forget Truth and Justice”
Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America”
Session II:
What is a Good Society?
Plato, The Republic, Book II, selections
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, selections
Aristotle, Politics, Book I, Chapters 1–6, selections
Confucius, Analects, selections
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, selections
Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I, Chapters 1–8
Richard Rubenstein, “Reflections on A Century of Progress,” in
The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future
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Session III:
State Efficiency; Individual Flourishing
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, selections from “Introduction
and Plan of the Work” and Books I, II, V
James Madison, The Federalist Papers, Number 10
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America,
Books 1 and IV, selections
Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing,” in Tell Me A Riddle
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Epilogue
The Combahee River Collective Statement
Session IV:
Leadership
Plato, The Republic, Book VII, selection
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, “The Melian Conference”
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapters 14-18, 25, selections
John Dewey, “Creative Democracy: The Task Before Us”
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham City Jail”
Ella Baker, “Developing Community Leadership”
Constance H. Buchanan, “The Erosion of Authority” in Choosing to Lead
Session V:
Globalization and Responsibility
Islam: The Five Pillars of Faith in the Qur’an
Ronald Reagan, “Evil Empire” Speech, March 8, 1983
President Barack Obama, “Remarks on a New Beginning,”
Cairo University, June 4, 2009
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Fareed Zakaria, “Culture Is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan
Yew,” in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 2, March/April 1994
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation
for Women and Islam, selections from “Breaking Through the
Islamic Curtain” and “A Call for Clear Thinking”
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Session VI:
Sophocles, Antigone (performance and discussion)
Session VII: Education for the Polity
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge,
Chapter 12, selections
Martha C. Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism”
Amartya Sen, “Democracy and Its Global Roots,” The New Republic
October 6, 2003
Aung San Suu Kyi, “A Culture of Peace, Democracy, and Human Rights,”
address to a meeting of the World Commission on Culture and
Development, Manila, November 21, 1994
Vaclav Havel, “The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World”
About the Authors
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