Systematic introduction to the nature of politics and government, organized around the dynamic relationship between power, principle, and process in democratic politics. Provides historic and contemporary overview; explores the interactions among government, laws, and societies at the national and international levels.
General Education Code
PE-H
Introduces key concepts in political discourse and key debates generated by contested terms such as powers, ideology, and multiculturalism. Students read from canonical texts, feminist scholarship, historical materials, and contemporary cultural and postmodernist writings.
What does a citizen do? What kind of citizen activity is appropriate to democratic aspirations? Course uses political theory to answer these questions as they relate to current and historical events, primarily in the North American context. Draws on texts ranging from Aristotle, Locke, Thoreau, Ellizon, and Ranciere, as well as present-day debates, to bear on the relationship of citizen action and identity.
General Education Code
TA
Explores intellectual and empirical trends shaping the U.S. relationship with the global economy. Traces debates about liberalism and interventionism, surveys post-war American foreign economic policy and discusses varieties of capitalism emerging around the world.
Introduces the study of politics through an analysis of the United States political system and processes. Topics vary, but may include political institutions, public policies, parties and electoral politics, and social forces.
Instructor
Melanie Springer
General Education Code
TA
Introduces key principles for understanding state politics in California and how power is mobilized for transformative change. Analyzes distinctive features of California's political development and culture in the governance of enduring social problems and policy dilemmas.
General Education Code
ER
Introduces music to the study of politics. Considers the fields of music and identity; music and social movements; and theories of music, art, and revolution.
Explores interdisciplinary methods, theories, and practices involved in producing and reproducing knowledges about Africa and the West within global politics. Examines ideas of international relations, international political economy, development, military structures, cultural formations, and the state through the critical use of film, literature, and scholarly texts.
Introduces the study of politics through the analysis of national political systems within or across regions from the developing world to post-industrial nations. Typical topics include: authoritarian and democratic regimes; state institutions and capacity; parties and electoral systems; public policies; social movements; ethnic conflict; and globalization.
General Education Code
CC
Introduces social policy around the world. Some countries provide free and good-quality health and education, as well as a minimum income to all citizens. Others, instead, provide meager benefits to few citizens.
Instructor
Sara Niedzwiecki
General Education Code
CC
Surveys major theories of international relations including realism, liberal institutionalism, constructivism, and newer approaches focused on problems of asymmetric warfare. Examines problems such as nuclear proliferation, international terrorism, global trade conflict, climate change, and humanitarian intervention.
General Education Code
CC
Can common global interest prevail against particular sovereign desires? Surveys selected contemporary issues in global politics such as wars of intervention, ethnic conflict, globalization, global environmental protection, and some of the different ways in which they are understood and explained.
General Education Code
PE-H
Cross-listed Courses
Explores the central political questions surrounding global governance of climate change. Focuses on how climate change is governed within the United Nations system, and, in particular, explores issues of equity and justice in terms of how we address climate change.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 179
Examines international law and politics through the lens of cooperation on transboundary environmental problems, ranging from acid rain to toxic chemicals to biodiversity loss and climate change, which have become pressing political concerns in our increasingly globalized economy.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 170
Explores the relationship between international trade and environmental protection. Centrally, we will consider the question: are trade liberalization and environment protection antithetical or conducive? We will use the theoretical literature on regime overlap to help us better consider this question.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 162
Interdisciplinary approach to study of law in its relation to category women and production of gender. Considers various materials including critical race theory, domestic case law and international instruments, representations of law, and writings by and on behalf of women living under different forms of legal control. Examines how law structures rights, offers protections, produces hierarchies, and sexualizes power relations in both public and intimate life.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 112
Explores the status of American civil liberties as provided by the Bill of Rights. Particular attention will be given to issues of concern relating to the aftermath of 9/11, including issues relating to detainees, freedom of information requests, wiretapping authority, watch lists, profiling, and creation of a domestic intelligence agency.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 111B
Instructor
Elizabeth Beaumont
Explores how countries organize their societies through legal rules. Particular attention is given to constitutional design, differences between common and civil law systems, changes brought about by the European Union, and the convergence of legal norms globally.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 116
Instructor
Jacqueline Gehring
General Education Code
CC
Quarter offered
Winter, Summer
Explores the role of law in both enabling and constraining the actions of elected politicians in the U.S. Among issues examined are voting rights, redistricting, and campaign finance. Course asks how the law shapes and limits our ability to choose our elected leaders, and in turn, how the law is shaped by political forces.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 133
Examines why we choose to memorialize some aspects of our history, but not others. What impact do those choices have on our contemporary politics and society? How may memorials help create a stronger democracy?
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 158
Instructor
Jacqueline Gehring
General Education Code
CC
Introduction to how individuals, societies, and states answer fundamental questions about disability, including what is or is not a disability, what causes disability, and what the proper responses to the existence of disabilities are.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 173
Instructor
Jacqueline Gehring
General Education Code
PE-H