» Humanomics


Humanomics serves as an interdisciplinary program to teach and research a humanistic science of economics. Economics and the humanities are often perceived as fundamentally disconnected. Economics asks why Homo sapiens is the most prosperous species in the history of the planet, but the tools of the discipline are inadequate to account for the wide range of human motives. In economics the human predicates of feeling, wanting, thinking, and knowing have been boiled down to the single motivation of naked “self-interest.” What does prosperity have to do with justice, courage, faith, hope, and love? The answer in economics is, “That’s for the humanities to ponder.”

The humanities do ponder such virtues, and prudence, too. The humanities give voice to feeling and artistic shape to experience. Exploring human stories and ideas helps us make meaning of our lives. Meaning is as much a part of the scientific evidence in economics as is behavior, and, of course, meaning influences behavior itself. Through the Humanities, through literature and film, philosophy and history, we can come to better understand ourselves as human beings, broadening our perspectives of the world as we move beyond the boundaries of our own lives and culture, asking “What does it mean to be human?” And quite fundamentally “being human” includes Homo sapiens’ unique propensity to specialize, to exchange, to create markets, the latter of which is often viewed skeptically from the humanities. Humanomics grew out of a desire to explore economics through the lens of the humanities and humanity through the lens of economics.

  • Minor in Humanomics
  • Topics in Humanomics
  • Humanomics FFC Courses
  • The minor is listed in the catalog under both the Argyros School of Business and Economics and in the interdisciplinary minors in the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

    Requirements: The minor requires a total of 21 credits, 12 of which must be upper division

    Catalog Description:

    The Humanomics minor is broadly organized by three questions: What makes a rich nation rich? What makes a good person good? And what do these questions have to do with one another? The Socratic dialogue in the required core courses provides students with an opportunity to personalize their inquiry of these three questions by analyzing and synthesizing texts from the concurrent reading of three disciplines and by producing original interdisciplinary texts. Electives enable students to study a variety of supporting topics to gain expertise in the synthesis of economics and the humanities. Students pursuing majors in Economics, English, or Philosophy and minoring in Humanomics must complete 12 credits from the list of elective courses which are outside of their major or major’s primary discipline, including Individual Studies (299/499) and Research/Creative Activity courses (291/491). Students pursuing majors in Business Administration must complete 12 credits from the list of elective courses excluding Econ 200, Econ 201, and Econ 374. Students pursuing majors in Accounting must complete 12 credits from the list of elective courses excluding Econ 200 and Econ 201.

    Core Courses Three offerings of ECON/ENG/PHIL 357 Topics in Humanomics (9 credits)

    Elective Courses (12 credits from the list below. 3 credits must be upper division.)

    ECON 200 Principles of Microeconomics
    ECON 201 Principles of Macroeconomics
    ECON 374 European Economic History
    ENG 270 Foundations of Rhetorical Studies
    ENG 372 Language and Ideology
    ENG 446 Topics in Rhetoric
    PHIL 104 Introduction to Ethics
    PHIL 318 Political and Legal Philosophy
    PHIL 327 Global Justice

    Up to six units total of approved Individual Study or Student‐Faculty Research/Creative
    Activity; ECON/ENG/PHIL 299/499 and ECON/ENG/PHIL 291/491.

    For questions, students should contact the Associate Dean, Academic Programs, Argyros
    School of Business and Economics.

    Total Credits: 21

  • Topics in Humanomics:

    Using Socratic dialogue this course engages students in dialogically exploring economics, philosophy, and literature texts to examine two questions at the core of Humanomics: What makes a rich nation rich? What makes a good person good? This course encourages in-depth study of the co-constitutive social texts regarding the exponential economic growth of the last two-hundred years, asking students to consider how knowledge, ethics, and aesthetics shape and reshape the basic principles of exchange and the human condition.  Examples of possible texts include but are not limited to: Paradise Lost, Goethe's Faust, Great Expectations, Frankenstein, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Polanyi's Personal Knowledge, The Fatal Conceit, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World.

    Current, Upcoming, and Past Courses:

    Spring 2024

    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Ethics and Economics of Wealth Creation"

    Katharine Gillespie & Bart Wilson

    Course Syllabus

    To be human is not to be an angel, but to know good and evil. To be human is to have the liberty to decide. To be human is to be limited, to face trade-offs. This course dialogically explores John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, F.A. Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, and Thomas Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions to shape one of the most fundamental questions of economics outside the Garden of Eden—not what must be decided but who shall decide. How do we apply the knowledge of good and evil in a society of strangers? What does the human constitution—“sufficient to [stand], though to free to fall”—mean for responsibility and liberty in the creation of wealth? “The world [is] all before [us], where to choose.”

    Interterm 2024

    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "What is Progress?"

    Brennan McDavid & Dillon Tauzin

    Course Syllabus

    A popular view today is that progress is inexorable: having set the machine of technological society in motion, we should expect it to continue forever. But is that a reasonable assumption? Looking to history it seems that long periods of progress have often eventually ended in gradual, or even catastrophic, decline. Is this time different? Why or why not? And what is progress, anyway? Perhaps we think we know it when we see it. Economists typically emphasize a material notion progress. When populations grow, wealth accumulates, productivity increases, and health improves, this is taken to be evidence of progress. But we can also speak of moral progress, scientific progress, social progress, political progress, artistic progress, and so on. Do these notions of progress necessarily go hand in hand? What kinds of value judgments are lurking beneath the surface of empirical claims about progress? If progress means advancing towards some goal, what is that goal? Who gets to define it? 

    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: " Spontaneous Order and the Myths of the American West"

    Erik Kimbrough & Michael Valdez Moses

    Course Syllabus

    The (re)settling of the American West during the 19th century has long been romanticized as“manifest destiny” carried out by “rugged individualists” who “pulled civilization up by its bootstraps” on the frontier. Embracing this narrative, some economists have looked to the American West as a paradigmatic case of spontaneous order, in which, despite the absence of centralized legal authority, a striking degree of economic and political order was quickly and enduringly established based on voluntary agreements. Revisionist accounts have questioned just how well that narrative fits the historical realities and just how spontaneous the emerging order actually was. Embracing the revisionists, other scholars have adopted an alternative economic account in which the settling of the west was rapacious and exploitative. This course will examine these economic accounts of the West, explore how they are related to the approach one takes to the West as a humanist, and attempt to resolve the seeming contradictions. We will watch, discuss and write about a wide variety of texts, including three seasons of the series Deadwood, Anderson and Hill’s classic The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier (2004), Patty Limerick’s Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (1987), and a series of academic papers on the notion of spontaneous order and on debates about the nature of social order as it emerged in the context of the 19th-century American Gold Rush.

     

    Fall 2023

    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Diversity: What is it and why does it matter?"

    Kyle Hampton and Keith Hankins

    Course Syllabus

    This course explores economic, epistemic, and ethical issues related to diversity with an emphasis on the role that diversity plays in business, science, and politics. Drawing on texts and media from a range of sources including economics, law, philosophy, psychology, film, television, and literature, we will ask questions like:  (1) What is diversity?  (2) How do we measure it?  (3) What kinds of diversity matter?  (4) What distinguishes the kinds of diversity that matter from the kinds that don’t?  (5) What are some of the challenges associated with diversity?  (6) What are some of the benefits?  (7) How can we capture the benefits while mitigating the associated costs/challenges?Having asked these questions we will also reflect on how these issues are represented in popular culture, and how artistic engagement with the issues deepens our understanding of them.  

    This course addresses issues arising from intolerance and/or exclusion due to one or more of the following: race, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, age, and/or disability and aligns with Chapman University’s mission: helping students to lead inquiring, ethical and productive lives as global citizens.  

     

    SPRING 2023

    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Toleration and its Discontents"

    Michael Valdez Moses and John Thrasher

    Course Syllabus

    Modern liberal, open societies are characterized by substantial diversity and pluralism. We take it as a given that our neighbors, our co-workers, and fellow citizens may not share our religion, ethnic background, sexual orientation, or political views, but that was not always the case. Even today there are some ways of life, religions, or beliefs that many still find deeply troubling. What makes the tremendous diversity that we see in free and open societies possible is the practice of toleration, institutionalized in the basic law of our society as well as in many of our social norms. But tolerance remains, as the philosopher T.M. Scanlon put it, “difficult.” It means permitting and even defending lifestyles, beliefs, and practices that one might not only find offensive or misguided, but fundamentally wrong. Furthermore, in open, liberal societies like ours, tolerance is not only considered a good thing, but also often required by law—a basic right at the core of our system. How can there be a basic right to do wrong? This is one of the core puzzles at the heart of a liberal society, one that leads us directly to the question of tolerance.

     In this class, we will explore toleration, both in theory and practice, and how it developed over time. The modern, liberal idea of toleration is the product of long and bloody struggles over religion, ethnicity, race, political and scientific beliefs, manners, and ways of living. We investigate this struggle by looking at important pieces of literature, drama, and film that document the struggle for toleration, as well as by delving into the economic history of how toleration developed as a political program in Europe during the last several hundred years. We will also engage closely with the rich theory behind toleration. Our goal is to present a three-dimensional idea of toleration, how it has developed, and what it is for, that will help us not only understand what toleration is and why it is valuable, but how to address the challenges that face us today.

    INTERTERM 2023

    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Inventing the Individual"

    Katharine Gillespie Moses and Bart J. Wilson

    Course Syllabus

    The modern world tends to think that commerce requires us to be ruthlessly self-interested.  Where did the idea of the individual self, distinct from family or clan, come from? And must the self pursue their own interest in commerce ruthlessly? This course dialogically explores the political philosopher Larry Siedentop’s Inventing the Individual, the economic historian Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, the anonymous medieval epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, John Milton’s Comus, and Andrej Sapkowski’s modern fantasy The Last Wish to shape one of the most fundamental concepts of modern human sociality—the Individual.  How did the idea of the Individual emerge in the Middle Ages?  When the Age of Commerce supplanted the ancient Age of the Aristocracy, how did the bourgeois ethic of the Individual differ from the aristocratic class of virtues? How does art situated at the crux of the old aristocratic order and the new bourgeois age invite us to witness the emergence of the bourgeois Individual? And finally, how does the form of a modern fantasy story embody a bourgeois interpretation of that same chivalric art?

    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "What Is Progress?"

    Erik Kimbrough and Brennan McDavid

    Course Syllabus

    A popular view today is that progress is inexorable: having set the machine of technological society in motion, we should expect it to continue forever. But is that a reasonable assumption? Looking to history it seems that long periods of progress have often eventually ended in gradual, or even catastrophic, decline. Is this time different? Why or why not? And what is progress, anyway? Perhaps we think we know it when we see it. Economists typically emphasize a material notion progress. When populations grow, wealth accumulates, productivity increases, and health improves, this is taken to be evidence of progress. But we can also speak of moral progress, scientific progress, social progress, political progress, artistic progress, and so on. Do these notions of progress necessarily go hand in hand? What kinds of value judgments are lurking beneath the surface of empirical claims about progress? If progress means advancing towards some goal, what is that goal? Who gets to define it?

    FALL 2022

    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "(Im)morality of Market Exchange"

    David Rojo Arjona and Bas Van der Vossen

    Course Syllabus

    Co-taught by professors from Philosophy and Economics, this course combines philosophical,
    literary, and economic texts and tools to explore the moral and ethical aspects behind the
    decisions to cooperate, being an entrepreneur, create value for others, protect others from being
    abuse, and which institutions and environments promote such decisions even in adverse
    conditions. Students in this course will question if it is possible that liberal democracies and
    exchange economies can offer to us a virtuous path to satisfy our own interests while cultivating
    fair relationships with others.

    SPRING 2022
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Life Through the Eyes of the Nobel Laureates"

    Keith Hankins and Katharine Gillespie Moses

    Course Syllabus

    Awarded on an annual basis the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel recognizes a living economist(s) whose work has made a significant impact on our understanding of economics. First awarded in 1969, this prize was meant to supplement the prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace that were endowed by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and which have been awarded awarded annually since 1901 to recognize outstanding contributions to humanity in those fields. This course explores life through the eyes of the Nobel Laureates, with an emphasis on the groundbreaking work of the economics laureates, and how the ideas that comprise this work have been reflected upon in different ways by some of the literature laureates.

    INTERTERM 2022
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Consumerism and Its Discontents"

    Erik Kimbrough and Virginia Postrel

    Course Syllabus

    The consumer society that has blossomed since the Industrial Revolution is the wealthiest, healthiest and freest society ever known. Yet with this wealth and the freedom to choose, we see people opting to expend incredible resources on “conspicuous consumption,” as they attempt to keep up with the Joneses (and Kardashians). This course will explore the logic of consumption and ask whether it is possible to mount an ethical defense of consumption and the life of the “leisure class.” What do people want? What do they need? Where do those wants and needs come from? And what should they want? Who gets to decide?

    INTERTERM 2022
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "(Im)morality of Market Exchange"

    David Rojo Arjona and Bas Van der Vossen

    Course Syllabus

    Co-taught by professors from Philosophy and Economics, this course combines philosophical,
    literary, and economic texts and tools to explore the moral and ethical aspects behind the
    decisions to cooperate, being an entrepreneur, create value for others, protect others from being
    abuse, and which institutions and environments promote such decisions even in adverse
    conditions. Students in this course will question if it is possible that liberal democracies and
    exchange economies can offer to us a virtuous path to satisfy our own interests while cultivating
    fair relationships with others.

    FALL 2021
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Shame: The Civilizing Emotion"

    Erin Crockett and Brennan McDavid

    Course Syllabus

    Eyes cast down. Flushed cheeks. The face of shame is universal and familiar. We know it when we see it, and—what’s more—we know shame when we feel it. What is shame, though, and why do we find it in every culture? What, if any, advantage does it serve for the individual, for the society, for the species?

    FALL 2021
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Justice-fying Property"

    Bart Wilson

    Course Syllabus

    What is property, and why do we have it?  Do we possess objects, or do objects possess us? Under what circumstances, if any, is property compatible with justice?  What trade-offs does the law face when choosing the rules that govern people and their things?  This course dialogically explores Richard Epstein’s Simple Rules for a Complex World, Lionel Shriver’s Property: Stories Between Two Novellas, and Bart Wilson’s The Property Species to shape how we understand relationships between people regarding things when we consider the possibility that conflict begets property and, simultaneously, property begets conflict.

    SPRING 2021
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Becoming Human"

    Erik Kimbrough and Michael Moses

    Course Syllabus

    What separates humans from the rest of the animals? Language, artistic or symbolic expression, creativity, abstract reasoning, self-consciousness, and any number of other characteristics have been suggested, but arguably the most distinctive human capacity is our morality. Trade, peaceful cooperation with strangers, trust, and reciprocity, to name only a few basic patterns of interaction that permeate our lives, are supported by morality, and disruptions of these patterns are met with moral condemnation and punishment. By carefully comparing influential works in classical moral philosophy and economics (Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments), in contemporary experimental social science (Michael Tomasello’s Becoming Human), as well major works of literature (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Franz Kafka’s “Report to an Academy”) and contemporary global cinema (Emma, JoJo Rabbit, The Spirit of the Beehive), we shall raise fundamental questions about how we become moral beings:  How does this process work? How does our moral sense develop? How do we become moral? Why do some individuals fail to develop a moral consciousness? Is there such a thing as human moral progress over time? What happens to the moral development of individuals if an entire society deviates from widely accepted moral norms (e.g. Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain)? Is it possible for someone to develop morally even in an immoral society? And ultimately, how, by becoming moral beings, do we become human?

    INTERTERM 2021
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Justice-fying Property"

    Robert Gasaway, Jan Osborn and Bart Wilson

    Course Syllabus

    What is property, and why do we have it?  Do we possess objects, or do objects possess us? Under what circumstances, if any, is property compatible with justice?  What trade-offs does the law face when choosing the rules that govern people and their things?  This course dialogically explores Richard Epstein’s Simple Rules for a Complex World, Lionel Shriver’s Property: Stories Between Two Novellas, and Bart Wilson’s The Property Species to shape how we understand relationships between people regarding things when we consider the possibility that conflict begets property and, simultaneously, property begets conflict.

    FALL 2020
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Hannah Arendt: Philosopher of Freedom"

    Katharine Gillespie Moses and Kyle Hampton

    Course Syllabus

    This course will introduce students to the life and thought of philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). Born in the then-German Empire to a Jewish family, Arendt lived through–and reflected upon–World Wars I and II, the rise of totalitarianism in Western and Eastern Europe, the discovery of the final solution, and the detonation of the first atomic bomb. She was nearly imprisoned by the Gestapo and was interred in a refugee camp in Vichy France before fleeing to America. After holding academic positions at Berkeley and the University of Chicago, she joined the faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York. In a number of influential books and essays, Arendt explores the role that power, violence, and evil play in both our everyday lives and the very structures of our inner thoughts.

    SPRING 2020
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Trust in Troubling Times"

    Brennan McDavid and Jan Osborn

    Course Syllabus

    Arguably, trust may be the beating heart not only of healthy relationships but of flourishing
    societies and even thriving economies. Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s “You must trust
    and believe in people, or life becomes impossible,” and Nobel-laureate economist Ken Arrow’s
    “virtually every commercial transaction has within it an element of trust” capture the
    importance of trust in human lives. But what is trust? This class will explore the notion of trust
    through philosophical, economic, and literary lenses. Through careful conceptual analysis,
    students in this course will develop a sense of the complexity of trust together with an ability to
    engage critically with depictions of trust in literature and film and uses of the concept in social
    science.

    INTERTERM 2020
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "The Ethics and Economics of Women's Freedom"

    Katharine Gillespie Moses and Bas van der Vossen

    Course Syllabus

    Is liberty universal? Are women less able to be and feel free than men? Are they subject to physical, social, philosophical, religious, political and/or economic constraints that disable them from achieving the same sorts of liberty as men do? Or are they able to exercise freedom in the same way as men do or even in ways that men cannot? And what are the consequences of women enjoying equal rights and freedom? In this course, we will explore these fundamental and still highly important questions about gender equality by reading political theory by John Locke and work on the economics of the family by Gary Becker’s alongside important feminist texts by Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf and other Englishwomen who wrote in earlier centuries.

    FALL 2019
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Cause, Effect, and Freedom"

    Erik Kimbrough and John Thrasher IV

    Course Syllabus

    Why are some people rich and others poor? Why are some tall and some short? Why do some companies succeed and others fail? Why are some societies growing while others are shrinking? Answers to these questions all involve claims about causation. We assume the world around us is largely governed by regular relations between cause and effect. Science is the attempt to tease out these relationships and to make valid inferences from cause to effect and vice versa. 

    This course will explore various visions of determinism and our reactions to those visions. Do we live in a deterministic world? What does determinism mean for our values and a notion of the good life? How do we know what causes what? We will explore these questions by looking at recent scientific arguments in favor of determinism, while at the same time reading classics of literature and philosophy that wrestle with the ethical and practical implications of understanding our world as a world of causes and effects

    SPRING 2019
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Noble Savages and Free Citizens: The Promise and Peril of Civil Society"

    Michael Valdez Moses and Keith Hankins

    Course Syllabus

    “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. He who believes himself the master of others does not escape being more of a slave than they.” The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the 18th century’s fiercest critics of civil society. He explored in great depth the ways in which living in community with others makes us less free, while romanticizing an (imaginary) past in which we lived lives of solitude. At the same time, he was one of history’s greatest champions of democracy. This course uses Rousseau’s work as a lens through which to assess our lives. Has living in community with others really made us less free as Rousseau contends? Has the rise of democracy made things better? How can economics help us answer these questions? Along the way we’ll look at how these themes have been explored in two classic novels. The first, Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard, documents the fortunes of an aristocratic family from Sicily during Italy’s fitful transition to democracy. The second, Mario Vargas Llosa's The Storyteller, probes the place of nomadic native cultures in the modern world by exploring how the same stories and myths get retold across time and space.

    Interterm 2019
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Ethics and
    Economics of Wealth Creation"

    Katharine Gillespie Moses and Bart Wilson

    Course Syllabus

    To be human is not to be an angel, but to know good and evil. To be human is to have the liberty to decide. To be human is to be limited, to face trade-offs. This course dialogically explores John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, F.A. Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, and Thomas Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions to shape one of the most fundamental questions of economics outside the Garden of Eden—not what must be decided but who shall decide. How do we apply the knowledge of good and evil in a society of strangers? What does the human constitution—"sufficient to [stand], though to free fall"—mean for responsibility and liberty in the creation of wealth? "The world [is] all before [us], where to choose."

    Fall 2018
    ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Working with Marx"

    Erik Kimbrough and Bas van der Vossen

    Course Syllabus

    Karl Marx’s theories have been a source of intellectual and political motivation, spawning revolutions both figuratively (in academic thought) and literally (in Russia, China, and elsewhere). In this course we will dive deep into Marx’s thoughts on the nature of work, capitalist society, and the social and ethical problems that surround it. The goal of this course is to assess how these ideas have resonated since his time and whether they remain relevant today. We will use a variety of sources and media that illustrate the continued appeal of these ideas, including Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Central questions for the course include: What is exploitation? And is it possible in a free market? Is exploitation avoidable? What is alienation? Do we experience alienation today? What is the value of work? And what should a worker expect to get out of a job? Will we ever live in a world without work? Would we want to?

    Spring 2018
    ECON/ENG 357: "Consumerism and its Discontents"

    Erik Kimbrough and Jan Osborn

    Course Syllabus

    The consumer society that has blossomed since the Industrial Revolution is the wealthiest, healthiest and freest society ever known.  Yet with this wealth and the freedom to choose we see people opting to expend incredible resources on "conspicuous consumption", as they attempt to keep up with the Joneses (and Kardashians).  This course will explore the logic of consumption and ask whether it is possible to mount an ethical defense of consumption and the life of the "leisure class".  What do people want?  What do they need?  Where do those wants and needs come from?  And what should they want?  Who gets to decide?

    Interterm 2018
    ECON/PHIL 357: "Social (In)Justice"

    Bas van der Vossen and Bart Wilson

    Course Syllabus

    This course attempts to clarify our understanding of the pervasive concept of social justice in the modern world. F.A. Hayek contends that the concept, despite well‐meaning intentions, is meaningless, incoherent, and harmful to the prosperity of a free society. David Miller argues that when considered contextually the principles of desert, need, and equality can be used to delineate a theory of social justice as a viable political ideal. How do the dystopian aesthetics of the “Good E” and “Bad E” in L.P. Hartley’s novel shape and reshape Hayek’s and Miller’s ideas on economics and the human condition?

  • Fall 2023 First-year Foundation Courses:

    FFC 100: "Utopia and Dystopia in Fiction and Film"

    Michael Valdez Moses and John Thrasher

    Course Syllabus

     The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time. Focusing on major works of literature, film, and philosophic prose, we will look at some of the most prominent and thought-provoking visions of utopia/dystopia in the 20th and 21st centuries and reflect on what these (mostly) fictional portrayals of society can teach us about the limits of political thinking in reshaping our conceptions of morality, human nature, and social life. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing. In so doing, we will also examine utopian visions of racial harmony as well as dystopian visions of racial discord and eugenics.

    Fall 2022 First-year Foundation Courses:

    FFC 100: "Meet the Beats"

    Katharine Gillespie Moses

    Course Syllabus 

    By the end of WWII, Americans had experienced years of mass death and devastation, including modern warfare, the Holocaust, and the dropping of two atomic bombs. As soldiers returned home, many Americans tried to return to a “normal” life, even as the normalcy they craved was invented by them anew: the nuclear family with a stay-at-home mom, the baby boom, life in the suburbs, corporate careers, etc. But a small group of “hipsters” dissented. Dubbed the “beats,” this young generation sought to create alternative lifestyles revolving around the creation of avant garde art and literature, jazz, free love, travel, drugs, and Eastern religious traditions such as Buddhism. These “beatniks” helped to dramatically transform an already-evolving American culture and paved the way for the radical upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. In this class, we will read and assess their works from the vantage point of the 21st century. What remains radical about the Beat Generation? What have we absorbed from them as the new normal? What have we rejected or tried to reject and why?

    FFC 100: "Ambition and the Meanings of Success"

    Sean Crockett & Virginia Postrel

    Course Syllabus 

    Ambition is the drive to excel. For some individuals, the goal is to beat other people. For
    others, it’s to exceed a personal best. And for some, it’s to advance a great cause.
    Through much of human history, ambition focused primarily on demonstrating physical
    prowess and attaining power. It was a spur to conquest and court intrigues and
    considered a sin by the Christian Church. Today, many more fields of endeavor offer
    scope for ambitious people. Ambition inspires art and science, business ventures and
    athletic achievements. Ambition also has a dark side. It can tempt the ambitious to
    cheat, to abuse other people, to win at any cost, and to unfairly block the ambitions of
    others. And ambition can disappoint. To be ambitious is to constantly risk—and
    experience—failure.

    FFC 100: "Utopia and Dystopia in Film and Fiction"

    Michael Valdez Moses 

    Course Syllabus

    The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time.. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing.

    FFC 100: "Intersection of Human Identity"

    David Rojo Arjona

    Course Syllabus

    This course combines philosophical, literary, and economic texts and tools to explore phenomena at the heart of today’s world, including immigration, segregation, identity politics, and conflict. Students in this course will question how identities and a mass culture intersect in the 21st century, will ask if liberal democracies and exchange economies can help humans achieve just, noble lives, respecting their identities.

    FFC 100: "Moonshops and Epic Falls"

    Erik Kimbrough & Keith Hampton

    Course Syllabus

    For every successful moonshot there are many attempts that crash and burn (sometimes literally). Innovation is hard, and most would-be innovators fail. But when it occurs, innovation can yield massive benefits, enriching people, improving health, and reducing our dependence on scarce resources. At the same time, innovation can wreak havoc, destabilizing social structures, setting off arms races, and encouraging environmental degradation. What makes innovation possible? Who makes innovation possible? What makes innovators tick? How much innovation is the right amount? How do we create a world that can capture the benefits of innovation while controlling the costs? Who gets to decide on the proper balance?

    Fall 2021 First-year Foundation Courses:

    FFC 100: "The Righteous Mind"

    Kyle Hampton

    Course Syllabus 

    Human societies are complex, encompassing a plurality of ideas and ideals, of cultures and languages, of beliefs and points of view. this course explores moral monism in a world of pluralities, questioning political, religious, and ideological polarization, asking "Why are good people divided by politics, by religion, by ideological extremism?"

    FFC 100: "Utopia and Dystopia in Film and Fiction"

    Michael Valdez Moses & John Thrasher IV

    Course Syllabus

    The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time.. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing.

    FFC 100: "Family Matters"

    Sean Crockett & Erik Kimbrough

    Course Syllabus

    Family matters. This is true in the basic and obvious sense that we all depend in some way or another on our kin; they bring us into the world, they may give us our names, feed us, raise us, teach us, instill values in us, support us, challenge us, punish us, and much more. However,  this class will explore the possibility that family matters even more than you might think, because family structure matters. Who we are raised by, who we live with, and who we marry varies widely across (and within) cultures. Is it possible that this variation can help us understand other patterns we see in the world? Does the nature of the family unit shape our patterns of social interaction, our expectations about the behavior of kin and strangers, or maybe even our ideas of right and wrong? In this class we will explore the role that family structures and the expectations engendered by those structures play in our lives. Reading works that span the social sciences, anthropology, biology and literature, we will explore different viewpoints on how family and marriage shape - and are shaped by - the rest of our social world. 

    Fall 2020 First-year Foundation Courses:

    FFC 100: "Utopia and Dystopia in Film and Fiction"

    Michael Valdez Moses & John Thrasher IV

    Course Syllabus

    The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time.. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing.

    FFC 100: "Humanomics: Intersections of Human Identity"

    David Rojo Arjona & Jan Osborn

    Course Syllabus

    Co-taught by professors from Economics and English, this course combines philosophical, literary, and economic texts and tools to explore phenomena at the heart of today’s world, including immigration, segregation, identity politics, and conflict. Students in this course will question how identities and a mass culture intersect in the 21st century, will ask if liberal democracies and exchange economies can help humans achieve just, noble lives, respecting their identities.

    Fall 2019 First-year Foundation Courses:

    FFC 100: "Health, Wealth, and Inequality"

    Andrea Matranga & Keith Hankins

    Course Syllabus

    What makes a rich nation rich? What makes a good person good? And what do these questions have to do with one another? How can the story of progress in health and wealth be one of both growth and inequality? While exploring these and other questions about markets and ethics, students will challenge the perceived tensions between economics and the humanities.  Co-taught by professors from the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy, this course combines social scientific analysis of health, wealth, and inequality with philosophical inquiry into the problems associated with and justifications for inequality, and explores how these issues have been portrayed in novels and film.

    FFC 100: "Humanomics: Radical Reformers"

    Bas van der Vossen & Erik Kimbrough

    Course Syllabus

    Critics of contemporary (and historical) society often propose reforms intended to make the world a better place. This course will explore radical reformers in fiction and in reality, trying to understand the social problems reforms are intended to address, the goals of the reformers, and the view of human motivation implied by the reformers’ proposals.

    FFC 100: "Humanomics: Exchange and the Human Condition"

    Katharine Gillespie Moses & Bart Wilson

    Course Syllabus

    What makes a rich nation rich? What makes a good person good? And what do these questions have to do with one another? While exploring these and other questions about markets and ethics, students will challenge the perception of economics as distinct from the humanities.  This course combines an economic inquiry into the human propensity to exchange with the cultural interpretation of the human condition in the HBO television show Deadwood. The instructional methods include Socratic roundtable discussions of the texts, laboratory experiments, journaling, focused free writes, creative writing, and expository papers.

    FFC100: "Utopia/Dystopia"

    Michael Valdez Moses & John Thrasher IV

    Course Syllabus

    The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time. Focusing on major works of literature, film, and philosophic prose, we will look at some of the most prominent and thought-provoking visions of utopia/dystopia in the 20th and 21st centuries and reflect on what these (mostly) fictional portrayals of society can teach us about the limits (if any) of political thinking in reshaping our conceptions of morality, human nature, and social life. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing. 

    FFC 100: "Intersections of Human Identity"

    David Rojo Arjona & Jan Osborn

    Course Syllabus

    Co-taught by professors from Economics and English, this course combines philosophical, literary, and economic texts and tools to explore phenomena at the heart of today’s world, including immigration, segregation, identity politics, and conflict. Students in this course will question how identities and a mass culture intersect in the 21st century, will ask if liberal democracies and exchange economies can help humans achieve just, noble lives, respecting their identities.

    Fall 2018 First-year Foundation Courses:

    FFC 100: "Humanomics: Exchange and the Human Condition"

    Michael Valdez Moses

    What makes a rich nation rich? What makes a good person good? And what do these questions have to do with one another? While exploring these and other questions about markets and ethics, students will challenge the perception of economics as distinct from the humanities. This course combines an economic inquiry into the human propensity to exchange with the cultural interpretation of the human condition in the HBO television show Deadwood. The instructional methods include Socratic roundtable discussions of the texts, laboratory experiments, journaling, focused free writes, and five expository papers.

    FFC 100: "Humanomics: The Ism Schism"

    Kyle Hampton and Jan Osborn

    Course Syllabus

    Human societies are complex, encompassing a plurality of ideas and ideals, of cultures and languages, of beliefs and points of view. This course explores moral monism in a world of pluralities, questioning political, religious, and ideological polarization, asking "Why are good people divided by politics, by religion, by ideological extremism; why is there an "ism schism"? this course asks students to think critically about challenges facing the global community.

    FFC 100: "Tyranny and Resistance from the Ancients to 1989"

    Katharine Gillespie Moses

    Course Syllabus

    What is power; how is it gained; how is it exercised over others; how is it lost? Is it something that rulers possess and their subjects lack? Or is it something that is created and recreated within an “economy of power relations” comprised of both acts of dominance and strategic acts of opposition? Do we need structures of power to live peacefully? If so, when might those structures become problematically violent in and of themselves and hence subject to questioning? What comprises a legitimate versus an illegitimate form of resistance? While exploring these and other questions through a broad survey of works spanning from ancient Greece to the pivotal year of 1989, this course combines a social, cultural, economic, and political inquiry into tyranny and resistance with a consideration of how various “economies of power” give rise to various forms of both dominance and opposition.

    FFC 100: "The Tragedy in Morality: Greek Drama and the Birth of Law and Ethics"

    Brennan McDavid and John Thrasher IV

    Course Syllabus

    The Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, as well as the comedies of Aristophanes explore the moral complexity of human life. The Orestes series of plays by Aeschylus (the Oresteia) shows how the search for justice, without the structure of law leads to violence and disorder. Oedipus Rex is the exemplar of how bad luck can make a moral mess—Oedipus (spoiler alert) unluckily and unwittingly ends up married to his own mother. Iphigenia at Aulis considers the conflicts that arise under the threat of war when moral emotions, superstitions, and old promises all clash in a perfect storm. And Antigone—perhaps the most famous of these plays in our contemporary times—examines the destruction that can result from a clash between human law and natural morality. In this class, we will explore several of the themes that the Greek tragedians wanted us to consider, and we will do so through engagement with the dramas themselves together with complementary philosophical writing on these same topics. The aim is to understand how the Greeks thought about complex moral issues and to reflect on what lessons we can take from their presentation of those problems in the tragedies.