Please select one of the following two essay questions for your final examination. This is a take home exam. Essays should not exceed 5 double spaced pages in length. All exams must be uploaded to Canvas by 4:00 pm on Wednesday . Your essay is worth 40 points toward your final grade.

1.It’s the last day of final exams at UAB. You are looking for a table at the University Commons so you can begin your essay for Foundations of Political Theory. The only seat is at a table with already occupied by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Karl Marx and Martin Luther King. They welcome you to sit with them and join the conversation about men, women, and revolution. What questions do you want to ask these authors? How have their ideas informed your own understanding of politics? Create a dialogue about property and liberty, difference and democracy, and the nature of justice.

2.Marx, Mill, and King focus attention on the economic, political, and racial injustice. Analyze how each author’s arguments relate to extending civil rights in a democracy by highlighting how divisions of class, ideology, and race prevent full participation in a just and representative democracy.

3. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. drew on his readings in political theory as he constructed the Letter from the Birmingham Jail addressing racial injustice in our city and nation. Write your own letter from a Birmingham classroom analyzing your lived experience through the works of Rousseau, Burke, Wollstonecraft, Marx, Mill, and King. (Keep in mind that you can also reference and respond to earlier writings we have studied throughout the semester). This is your letter — let’s hear your voice as you join the conversation on justice and democracy in political thought.