“Reacting to the Past” not just studying it.............

“You are about to embark on an adventure. Prepare yourself for an imaginary walk from the Peiraeus to the site of your first meeting of the Ekklesia at the Pnyx. I, Athena, [aka Professor Felson] goddess of your city, a divinity just and flexible by nature, will be your Gamemaster, making and enforcing rules, changing them when I see fit, and delegating to our priestess [aka Professor Kraft] certain advisory tasks that I don't take on myself. Consider both of us as your guides who help you, o citizens, attain a kind of heroic excellence as you play your respective roles. The son of Aristides the Just [aka Professor Norman] will guide you on your walk.”

So began our pedagogical adventure in the fall of 2004 when the UGA class played "The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 BCE” and “Rousseau, Burke and Revolution in France in 1791.”

“The Threshold of Democracy” begins at the moment when the Thirty Tyrants have been expelled from Athens and the democracy restored. Students are divided into different factions (radical democrats, moderate democrats, oligarchs, Socratics) and assigned roles; detailed descriptions of each faction’s intellectual goals and possible strategies are given; and then the factions convene to plot their courses of action. Students meet in the Athenian Assembly and the law court to debate reconciliation after the expulsion of the tyrants, the organization of Athenian government, the expansion of citizenship, the future of the Athenian empire, and the fate of Socrates. In order to speak effectively and to advance the interests of their faction, students must have command over and grapple with the complex arguments of Plato’s Republic, as well as excerpts from Thucydides, Xenophon, and other contemporary sources. In this class, we recreate the intellectual dynamics of one of the most formative periods in history. By examining democracy at its threshold, the game provides the perspective to consider its subsequent evolution.

In addition to the ancient texts mentioned above, the course uses The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C. by Josiah Ober and Mark C. Carnes (Longman Publishers, 2005) for its primary textbook.