HIST 090B. Sic Semper Tyrannis: Histories of Misrule

This course is a global-scale engagement with the intellectual and cultural history of debates and critiques of tyranny and catastrophic incompetence by political rulers and authorities. We will look at how people have anticipated and defined tyranny before it happens, how they bear witness to it while it is occurring, and how intellectuals and societies apply the label after the fact to their own past. We will discuss and debate whether misrule is simply in the eye of the beholder or a label applied to political opponents, or whether there is some enduring definition with comparative value that has emerged from millennia of thinking about political power.

Concentrations: Domination and Resistance; Empires and Nations
Social sciences.
1 credit.
Eligible for Concentrations: Domination and Resistance; Empires and Nations
Fall 2026. Burke.
Catalog chapter: History
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/history

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