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Every three semesters I teach a course called "American Political Thought". I love to teach the class because I always rethink things -- not as much as I would like but I try. The first thing I rethink is the nature of the course. I teach American politics not theory but this is, in effect, a theory course. Some of the theorists in our department don't believe there is such a thing as "american political thought" arguing either a) it is all derived from european political thought or b) american politics has always been a practical enterprise.

So the first thing I try to deal with in the course is:

1) What is the importance of "thought" in general
2) What is "american"
3) what is "politics"

The second level is "where are such things to be found"
Philosophers (dewey, croly, rorty, james, pierce)
Legal cases and scholars (holmes, posner, supreme court case)
Magazine/Journal articles
Practical politicians (jefferson/hamilton/lincoln/progressives/new left/feminist writing etc)

The third question I grapple with is pedagogy -- do I teach "historically" -- which means starting with the puritans and going as far as I can or "thematically" creating some themes (power, citizenship, participation, authority, democracy, freedom v equality etc) and track how such questions across periods for comparison purposes.

I have my own notions of course -- thought does matter and it is worth it for students to examine the answers to political questions that their own nation has put forward. I also always want to teach "thematically" but find that students with no grounding in history (when was the civil war?) get confused.

Since this is an "APD" post I wonder if other people confront these questions; teach similar classes etc.