January 17, 2017
the post-factual era?

January 19, 2017
anti-intellectualism across the ages
reading: Jacoby, Introduction and Chapter One

January 24, 2017
anti-intellectualism and the Enlightenment
reading: Wernick, Robert. 1997. “Declaring an Open Season on the Wisdom of the Ages.” Smithsonian 28(2):72-80.

January 26, 2017
Trump team analysis due
anti-intellectualism in American history
reading: Jacoby, Chapter Two

January 31, 2017
our weird political moment – how the Democratic and Republican establishments never saw Trump coming
reading:
Gage, Beverly. 2016. “How ‘Elites’ Became One of the Nastiest Epithets in American Politics.” New York Times January 03.

Lilla, Mark. 2016. “The End of Identity Liberalism.” New York Times November 18.

Boot, Max. 2016. “How the ‘Stupid Party’ Created Donald Trump.” New York Times July 31.

February 2, 2017
our weird political moment – from middlebrow to unibrow?
reading: Jacoby, Chapter Five

February 7, 2017
populism
reading:
Witte, Griff, Emily Rauhala, and Dom Phillips. 2016. “Trump’s Win May Be Just the Beginning of a Global Populist Wave.” Washington Post November 13.

Rappeport, Alan and Noah Weiland. 2016. “White Nationalists Celebrate ‘An Awakening’ After Donald Trump’s Victory. New York Times November 19.

French, David. 2016. “Trumpocalypse: The World Has Not Ended, Yet.” National Review December 19:26-29.

February 9, 2017
populism
reading: Jacoby, Chapter Four

February 14, 2017
polarization
reading:
Pew Research Center. 2016. “A Wider Ideological Gap Between More and Less Educated Adults.” April 26.

Muro, Mark and Sifan Liu. 2016. “Another Clinton-Trump Divide: High-Output America vs Low-Output America.” Brookings Institutions November 29.

Katz, Josh. 2016. “‘Duck Dynasty’ vs. ‘Modern Family’: 50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide. New York Times December 26.

February 16, 2017
polarization
reading: Boykoff, Maxwell T. 2013. “Public Enemy No. 1? Understanding Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change.” American Behavioral Scientist 20(10):1-22.

February 21, 2017
campaign season book analysis due
media effects, allegations of media bias, false balance
reading: Boyd, Danah. 2017. “Did Media Literacy Backfire?” Data & Society: Points January 5.

February 23, 2017
the hostile media effect
reading: Jacoby, Chapter Seven

February 28, 2017
fake news
reading: Jacoby, Chapter Ten

March 2, 2017
fake news
Lee, Timothy B. 2016. “The Top 20 Fake News Stories Outperformed Real News at the End of the 2016 Campaign.” Vox November 16.

Peters, Jeremy W. 2016. “Wielding Claims of ‘Fake News,’ Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media.” New York Times December 25.

Postman, Andrew. 2017. “My Dad Predicted Trump in 1985 – It’s Not Orwell, He Warned, It’s Brave New World. The Guardian February 2.

March 7, 2017
[note time and location change]
Common Experience lecture, Alkek Teaching Theater, 5:00 p.m.: Tom Nichols, “Democracy in Peril: Trump, National Security and the Death of Expertise in the Information Age.”
reading: Dunning, David. 2014. “We are all Confident Idiots.” Pacific Standard October 27.

March 9, 2017
conspiracy thinking
reading: Hofstadter, Richard. 1965. “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Chapter Three in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

March 14 & 16
spring break

March 21, 2017
conspiracy thinking, 9/11 as an “inside job”
reading: Oliver, J. Eric and Thomas J. Wood. 2014. “Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion.” American Journal of Political Science 58(4):952-66.

March 23, 2017
conspiracy thinking, HRC’s child sex dungeon pizza parlor
reading: Aisch, Gregor, John Huang, and Cecilia Kang. 2016. “Dissecting the #PizzaGate Conspiracy Theories.” New York Times December 10.

March 28, 2017
implausible conspiracy papers due
guest speaker: Dr. David Dietrich, Dept. of Sociology, Texas State University
reading: Jacoby, Chapter Three

March 30, 2017
the attack on science from the left, postmodernism
reading:
SKIM: Sokal, Alan D. 1996. “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” Social Text 46/47:217-52.

READ CLOSELY: Latour, Bruno. 2004. “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30(2):25-48.

April 4, 2017
the attack on science from the left, vaccine dodgers
reading:
Tierny, John. 2016. “The Real War on Science: The Left Has Done Far More Than the Right to Set Back Progress.” City Journal autumn.

April 6, 2017
the attack on science from the left
reading: Jacoby, Chapter Six

April 11, 2017
the attack on science from the right, the Texas State Board of Education
reading: Jacoby, Chapter Eight

April 13, 2017
the attack on science from the right, creationism
readiing: Butler, Ella. 2010. “God is in the Data: Epistemologies of Knowledge at the Creation Museum.” Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 73(3):229-51.

April 18, 2017
the attack on science from the right, climate change deniers
reading: Jacoby, Chapter Nine

April 20, 2017
the attack on science from the right, climate change deniers
reading: Jacoby, Chapter Eleven

April 25, 2017
video pleas for the life of the mind due

April 27, 2017
reading: Jacoby, Conclusion

May 9, 2017
“one more thing” due via email at 11:00 a.m.