Fall 2026 Courses

Instructor: Dr. Patrick Lee Miller
MWF 11:30 AM – 12:20 PM | WASH 293L

Is there a human nature? Or is there no such thing, but instead only the artificial construction of "human nature" according to each society? Evolutionary theory, and evolutionary psychology in particular, argues that there is something natural to who we are. Billions of years of natural selection, and especially sexual selection, have shaped not only our bodies but our ways of desiring, feeling, and thinking.

This course begins by dismantling the myth of the "blank slate" that informs so much of our default thinking nowadays about human nature. Our political life—which encompasses our universities and how they pursue knowledge—is founded on this myth, so the course frames its study of evolutionary psychology as a political question: what should the statesman learn from evolutionary theory about who we are and how we should live together? In order to answer this question, the course turns to the basics of evolutionary theory, ensuring that students understand evolutionary arguments from first principles. Then it turns to specific theses of evolutionary psychologists: that aggression and altruism have specific evolutionary roles, that the two sexes are different by nature, that our minds have been shaped by the ancient pressure to find mates, and that our behaviors towards kin and nation are intelligible according to evolutionary arguments.

The course will not only introduce students to these arguments, but teach them how to evaluate them. Ultimately, the goal of the course is to assess how (if at all) evolutionary psychology helps us better understand human life, especially its political dimensions.

Instructor: Dr. Philip Michelbach
TR 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM | WASH 293N/POLS 371

This course is an introduction to modern political thought in the West. The course is taught as a historical and thematic narrative. In the first part of the course, we examine the conditions and features of modern politics by focusing on the post-medieval separation of religion and politics. In the second section we will consider attempts to find a new foundation for politics, and in particular for the nation state, from the 17th through the 19th centuries.

Instructors: Dr. Josiah Lippincott and Dr. Dan Demetriou
MWF 9:30 AM – 10:20 AM | WASH 393A

This seminar examines the intellectual and political currents commonly called the New Right. It begins with the postwar conservative consensus and fusionism. It then examines major and emerging strands of rightist thought, including vitalism/Nietzscheanism, integralism, postliberalism, neoreaction, nationalist populism, and ethnonationalism. The aims are to (1) understand these movements, (2) critically evaluate them, and (3) provide students with an opportunity to develop and defend their own philosophical and policy views on the contested issues these movements seek to address.

Instructor: Dr. Patrick Lee Miller
Thursday 1:00 PM – 1:50 PM | WASH 293U/HONR 293V

We will read and discuss Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life. Like this biography, our focus will be on Washington the man, the general, and the statesman. Along the way we will discuss general questions raised by his life: What is virtue? What is statesmanship? What is America?