NEH Enduring Questions Course on "What Is Equality?"

FAIN: AQ-50572-11

Georgetown University (Washington, DC 20057-0001)
Samantha Nicole Pinto (Project Director: September 2010 to August 2015)
Lahra Smith (Co Project Director: May 2016 to August 2015)

The development of an undergraduate course on the concept of equality in the cultural and historical contexts of Europe, Africa, and the United States.

"Equality," is, in many ways, the cornerstone of modern conceptions of society, government, and global human rights. Since the Enlightenment, it has been the express concern of the "Western" world. But it is also, historically and culturally, controversial: What does "equality" mean? Or, as a famous law article on the topic asks, "Equality of what?" This proposed course would trace the European and US philosophical traditions of equality alongside cross-cultural conceptions and critiques of the term, particularly those produced by African authors and artists. In doing so, it hopes to unsettle easy assumptions about the term's meaning, and to bridge American ideals of equality to a global understanding of the term.