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VIDEO COURSES
A World of Desires: Sexual Diversity in the Postmodern Age
Instructor: Carol Queen | Wednesdays, June 30, July 7 and July 14 | 8:30 PM Eastern / 5:30 PM Pacific Taught by renowned sexologist Carol Queen, this course will examine sexualities that are outside the traditional heterosexual binary and transgress norms of acceptable sexual desires.. A failure to recognize and accept diverse identities has caused considerable cultural—and personal—pain and trouble. “A World of Desires” will teach a healthy sex-positivity beyond unnecessary binary norms. Insistence on a “normal” sexuality simply does not fit the conditions and constructions of the world as it exists today.
Conservatism
Instructor: Daniel McCarthy | Tuesdays, June 29 and July 6, 13, 20, and 27 | 8:30 PM Eastern / 5:30 PM Pacific Conservatism is a much-contested idea, and in some quarters a much-reviled one. Is conservatism just another word for fascism, as many critics of Donald Trump and the latter-day Republican Party believe? Did conservatism betray its roots by turning illiberal? Or is conservatism a distinct tendency in political thought and action that is neither fascist nor liberal, but a powerful critique of both? In this course, Daniel McCarthy will lay out the case for conservatism as understood by its own best thinkers and through the themes characteristic of their thought.
Logic and Politics: How to Make an Argument
Instructor: Ben Burgis | Tuesdays June 1, 8, 15, 22 | 8:30 PM Eastern / 5:30 PM Pacific In this course you’ll learn how to break apart arguments and see if they work and, when they don’t, where and how they go wrong. In a typical university informal logic or “critical reasoning” course, you might do this by studying unrealistic stock examples—arguments no one would ever make in real life. Instead, in this course, we’ll focus on examples from real arguments made in hotly contested political and philosophical debates on subjects ranging from capitalism vs. socialism to gender identity. In all cases, the point isn’t to tell you what to think, but to help you sharpen the analytic tools you can use to sift through these issues for yourself.
The Case Against Morality
Moral responsibility and morality lie at the heart of how we view the world. In our daily life, we feel responsibility-related emotions: gratitude, pride, love, forgiveness, resentment, indignation, and shame. We love those who freely and reciprocally love us. Also, we feel that people act rightly or wrongly, make the world better or worse, and are virtuous or vicious. These policies are central to our justifying how we see the world and treat others. This course will present and examine the argument that our views on these matters, except love, are false.
The Great Books: Plato, The Republic
In this course we will do a close reading and analysis of the monumental work of philosophy, Plato’s Republic. You’ll learn Plato’s views on the meaning of justice, the characteristics of a good society, the proper relationship between the individual and the community, the problems with democracy, the function of art, the consequences of greed, the best education for each class of person, the basis of morality, and the very nature of truth.
Introduction to Cryptocurrency
This course explores and explains the crucial elements of cryptocurrency in history, technology, economics, and politics. The obscure and often confusing world of crypto is demystified and made immediately accessible, whether the student is an investor, an activist, or is simply hungry for knowledge on this fascinating and financially rewarding topic.
Make Your Own Guns: A Guide to 3D-Printed Firearms
This unprecedented course—a course that no regular university would consider offering—will guide you through the making of your own 3D-printed gun and give you the knowledge to become self-sufficient in providing for your own security.
Postmodernism & Critical Theory
This course is unique among university courses in that it is co-taught by two scholars of critical theory and postmodernism who are on opposite sides of many of these questions. It will not only be a three-week discussion but also a civil, respectful debate involving the instructors and participants.
Talkin’ Shit: The History of Hip-Hop
This course examines the origins and rise of one of the most prolific yet misunderstood forms of popular culture in American history.
Talkin’ Shit: The History of African-American Culture
This course examines the origins and ascendancy of the most loved, hated, and powerful popular culture in American history.
Sex Positivity
Sexologist Carol Queen tells the history of this culture-changing movement, whose roots lie in the emergent academic discipline of sexology in the 19th century, and argues for the value of establishing sex-positive cultures in a world full of diverse desires and boundaries.
Race: The History of an Idea
This course examines the origins of the idea of “races” of human beings in the United States, and traces its deployment over two centuries in efforts to conquer, exterminate, civilize, and assimilate various “races” of people both inside the U.S. and across the world.
The Politics of Sex Work
The history, politics, and cultural norms of sex work, with an argument for why it should be decriminalized.
An Introduction to Nietzsche
Examining Nietzsche’s policy and politics of joy, radical life affirmation, and what it means to live outside of morality – with relentless ethics.
What is Postmodernism?
Learn the major arguments of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and other postmodernist philosophers – and new ways of thinking about the questions they raise.
Renegade History of the United States
It was not “good” citizens who established American liberty, but “immoral” and “degraded” people on the fringes of society.
Dangerous Nation:The U.S. & The World, 1776-1898
An argument that globalist, imperialist ideas were embedded in America's founding philosophy.
World War II: The Great Blowback
Examine the emergent, revisionist history whether America's “good war” was actually America's greatest blowback.
The War on Terror: A Global Catastrophe
An argument that U.S. military interventions created and sustained what appears to be a self-perpetuating war.
Afghanistan: America’s Longest Foreign War
A history of the origins and consequences of America’s longest war.
