Session D

The aim of this course is to introduce students to key texts and topics by some of the most significant and well known thinkers in the history early modern political thought writing roughly between 1500 and 1770. The works we will consider span the periods characterized by European historians as the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

Please note that this course description is from Spring 2014.

This course is designed to introduce students to the major theoretical approaches to international politics, to explore important historical and contemporary questions and debates in international affairs, and to teach students to think critically about international relations.  After defining what the study of international relations involves and discussing the how and why of thinking theoretically, we will discuss the major theoretical approaches, concepts, and debates in the field. We will then turn to security issues looking at both World Wars and the Cold War.  The next section of the course looks at issues of political economy including questions of development, rich-poor country relations, and globalization.  Finally we examine a number of contemporary issues of global governance including human rights, ethnic conflict, humanitarian intervention, and environmental issues. We end the semester looking at shifting power dynamics internationally including the rise of China.

Summer 2022 Synchronous Lecture and Discussions will be offered ONLINE only.

All readings for this class will be provided electronically, at no cost, through the library. If you prefer, you can purchase the two main books electronically or in paper form. If you choose to purchase, be sure to get the correct edition listed below.

Art and Jervis, eds. International Politics, 13th edition: https://www.amazon.com/International-Politics-Enduring-Concepts-Contemporary/dp/0134482018/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3H57SMJMF7BAT&keywords=art+and+jervis&qid=1648655544&sprefix=art+and+jervis%2Caps%2C124&sr=8-1

Mingst, et al, Essentials of International Relations, 9th edition: https://www.amazon.com/Essentials-International-Relations-Karen-Mingst/dp/0393872181/ref=sr_1_3?crid=O6S1FVSBGRX9&keywords=mingst+essentials+of+international+relations+9th&qid=1648655734&sprefix=mingst%2Caps%2C123&sr=8-3

This course aims to study sovereignty, widely regarded the core concept constitutive of modern state-centric politics and international law.  The first part of the course will study the origins of the concept in medieval legal and political thought and its later development in major texts by Bodin, Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Rousseau, Schmitt, Arendt.  The second part of the course will then focus on major interpretive themes associated with the politics of sovereignty, such as territoriality, constitutionalism, and sovereignty in international law.  Readings may include studies by Agamben, Grimm, Kantorowicz, Krasner, Kalyvas, Loughlin, Skinner, Stilz, and Tierney.  This is an upper-level undergraduate Theory course.  It is highly recommended that students will have already completed EITHER PS 112a or 112b or an equivalent course in the history of political thought.  

This course provides an overview of the U.S. political system from the nation's founding to the present. In addition to examining the core structures of our federal system, we will also explore a number of special topics, such as the evolution of civil rights and the causes of partisan gridlock. The course will pay particular attention to the role institutions play in shaping political conflict and, ultimately,in determining who wins and who loses.

Instructor: Thomas Kent

   Many scholars agree that groups and group identities are central to politics. But what constitutes a group? Why are some groups more salient than others? What is identity? And how do certain identities become central to political conflicts? This class combines theoretical and empirical approaches to these questions and emphasizes the complexity of group identity. We focus on racial and ethnic politics in the United States. Additionally, this class considers psychological theories of identity, comparative perspectives on immigration and racial identity, and the relationship between ethnic and non-ethnic identities including gender, class, and geography. We discuss foundational scholarship on Black politics and also emerging scholarship on White identity. We adopt a developmental and comparative perspective for the analysis of Latino and Asian-American panethnic identification. We also consider mechanisms of change in group identities. 

  The course is structured around a series of debates. What do we mean by “identity politics”? Does in-group bias arise from conflicting group interests and, if not, where does it come from? Can descriptive representation be a useful means for furthering group interests? How are group interests defined, and how do they change over time? Is it coherent to speak of group interests at all, or will the interests of groups always be contested? Finally, what effects (if any) can we expect demographic change to have on American politics? For each of these issues, this course aims to provide students with conceptual and empirical tools necessary to develop informed understandings of these debates.

Instructor: Joseph Warren

This course provides an overview of the U.S. political system from the nation's founding to the present. In addition to examining the core structures of our federal system, we will also explore a number of special topics, such as the evolution of civil rights and the causes of partisan gridlock. The course will pay particular attention to the role institutions play in shaping political conflict and, ultimately,in determining who wins and who loses.

Instructor: Thomas Kent

     While the struggle to develop is no small matter, once countries successfully join the  club of “developed” countries challenges do not disappear. Where developing countries  struggle to build, organize, and marshal the resources and institutions necessary to develop,  once countries have developed they are faced with new challenges of what to do with their  newfound (or long standing) capacity to execute public policy. Should they continue on an  endless spiral of economic growth? Are “post material” issues of equity which may have been  swept under the rug of material development now national priorities? What about new  frontiers and new challenges which seemed out of reach such as global standards, global  systems, climate crises, or the final frontier? There are very real and important questions of  what countries should do when they are heavily constrained by crime or accident of history  and are striving to develop on an uneven playing field. But once they have broken through  and developed, new questions begin to be asked. It is a tragedy when people starve because  there simply isn’t enough to go around but is it not more puzzling when people starve despite  their being more than enough to go around?  
        This course focuses on the problems, crises, and choices which face those countries  who have seemingly achieved what all countries desire: development and prosperity for their  citizens. It adopts a comparative, cross-national perspective to analyze the variety of ways  that different countries have attempted to address the common and specific challenges they  face once they have, in a very real sense, developed the capacity to do almost anything they  choose.  
        Empirical examples will be drawn from throughout the world and throughout the  history of developed countries after the industrial revolution. Particular emphasis will be  placed on the East Asian, European, and American experiences. 

Instructor: Konrad Posch

The overwhelming majority of governments throughout history have been dictatorial. Even the recent spread of democracy has not extirpated authoritarian rule: as of 2012 roughly one quarter of all countries are considered full-blown autocracies. Whatever the benefits of democracy, it seems dictatorship is here to stay. This course explores the characteristics and dynamics of non-democratic regimes: how and why they come about, what sustains them, why some people resist them and others do not, and how and why they decline and fall. We will explore a variety of examples from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Using films and novels in addition to political science literature, we will investigate how dictators maintain their power, how ordinary people react to repression, and the links between dictatorship and security and economic development.

Subfield: Comparative Politics

Note: Course description is from Summer 2014

The aim of this course is to introduce students to key texts and topics by some of the most significant and well known thinkers in the history early modern political thought writing roughly between 1500 and 1770. The works we will consider span the periods characterized by European historians as the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

Please note that this course description is from Spring 2014.

This course is designed as an introduction to the basic features of American constitutional law. Topics to be explored include the makeup and structure of government, the relationship of each branch to its peers and to the states, and the power granted to, and limits placed upon, the federal government by the Constitution. In the second half of the course, we will shift to explore the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of equal protection and due process, including questions regarding race, sex, and sexual orientation discrimination.

Instructor: David Schraub