Graduate

Draws on history of political thought, contemporary social and critical theory, and the contributions of legal and institutional analysis of various kinds to engage in critical study of political practices that are experienced or understood as in some way limiting, oppressive, or wrong; to transform our understanding of these practices; to see their contingent conditions; and to articulate possibilities of governing ourselves differently.

Concerns transformation of social forces into political ones. Focuses on formation, articulation, mobilization, and organization of political interests and identities, their mutual interaction, and their effects on state structures and practices and vice versa. Major themes are 1) social bases of political action: class, gender, race, and other determinants of social division and political identity and 2) relevant forms of political agency and action, including development of political consciousness and representation of interests and identities in the public sphere.

Introduces study of political institutions as instruments of collective decision making and action. Explores alternative theoretical approaches to development of political institutions, state and political economy, and security dilemmas.

Introduction to the theories and methodologies of political economy. Focuses on the relationship between states and markets and considers the politics of economic choices and institutions germane to both national and global political institutions. Addresses origins and development of markets and capitalism; historical evolution of states and their economies; relationship between labor, capital, production, and consumption; regulation of production; macroeconomics and management of economies; and issues of national and global social welfare.

Investigates approaches to study of politics and to enterprise of social science in general. Works from positivist, interpretive, historical, and critical approaches provide examples held up to critical and epistemological reflection.

Gives students practical tools to transform research questions into viable and well-crafted research designs. Introduces conceptual development, various forms of data, and rules for case selection. The goal is to train students in a range of specific methods, including interviewing, ethnography, and archival work.

Introduces, at the graduate level, some of the central conceptual categories and material implications that underwrite the world of the modern. Explores concepts including the individual, historicism, contract, and objectivity.

The human body has been productive of a wide range of varied and competing discourses. Among the themes covered are sexuality, hygiene, the grotesque, and criminality.

Explores seminal works in classical political economy, particularly its consolidation at the moment that industrial society emerged from commercial society, as demonstrated in the writings of Bernard Mandeville, Adam Smith, and Thomas Malthus.

Graduate seminar exploring connections between the body politic and human bodies, particularly as they relate to the sensory dimension of political and personal experience. The myriad ways these connections have been drawn, from antiquity to the present, belie the aspiration of philosophy to organize political life around reason. These connections also offer us ways in to consider the materiality of social life, and commercial life in particular, generating perspectives on capitalism and late modernity. Engagements with these materials also provide opportunities to explore the relationship between sensual materialism and affect theory.

Explores the potential in philosophical precursors to recent affect theory, alongside classical political economy and its critics, to develop an alternative epistemology for political economy. Readings include: Aristotle, Spinoza, Deleuze, Hume, Negri, Hardt, Smith, Bergson, and Marx.

Considers the subject of race and racism from a political and historical perspective appealing to literatures from history, anthropology, science, and literary studies.

Focuses on early 19th- through early 20th-century socialist and anarchist thought, excluding Marx. Theorists studied include Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, Stirner, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Perkins Gilman, and Goldman. Some secondary literature and related contemporary theory is also treated.

Democracy is an essential political concept, and a fundamentally contested one. Since the 1980s, scholars of comparative politics have attempted to explain why and when countries transition from authoritarianism to democratic institutions. However, regime change at the national level only sets the stage, leaving deeper questions about what democracy means in practice--how it plays out (or is undermined) throughout the state and at subnational levels; whom it includes and excludes; what options it opens; and what possibilities it forecloses. Such questions relate debates about the potential and the limitations of democracy in general.

Focuses on questions of sovereignty. Of what does sovereignty consist? How is it secured, proclaimed, and perpetuated? How is it insecure, contingent, and subject to contestation? How is the idea of individual sovereignty related to the idea of the sovereignty of the state? Our aim is less to answer these questions definitively than to explore them and understand how theorists (historical and contemporary) have explored them, and how different historical episodes illuminate them.

Addresses the role of non- and sub-state actors in global governance. Explores the concept of agency in world politics, and the conditions under which these actors acquire global agency in contemporary world politics. Introduces various theoretical perspectives with which to identify and evaluate agency, with a focus on alternative sources of authority, identity, and power.

Green political thought, philosophy, debates, and practices; history of ecological thought and comparative study of competing ideas and proposals. Critical examination of neo-liberal environmentalism.

Explores some of the major ways the modern nation-state has been theorized by political theorists, political scientists, and sociologists before moving on to examine some alternate modalities of organizing collective life from Anglophone and Francophone Africa, the Caribbean, India, China, Indigenous Hawaii and North America, and the Muslim world.

Introduction to the study of transnational security apparatuses and politically sensitive forms of mobility, with a focus on borders, their political significance, and those who monitor, cross and challenge them. Discussion includes recent monographs published in the fields of critical security studies, critical border studies, and new mobilities. Also studies these works in conversation with more traditional approaches in the field (notably realist, constructivist and neo-functionalist) that they aim to problematize. In addition, students reflect on the tools provided by different disciplinary approaches (international relations, cultural anthropology, critical theory, history) to think about these issues.

Explores major debates on the role and rule of law in society, with attention to efforts to use law to seek justice or respond to injustice. This includes engaging in three overlapping sets of conversations: What is law—its sources and functions—and how, where, and on whom does it operate? What is the "rule of law"—what is it for and whom does/can it serve and how? What are different ways that people and groups grapple with or respond to the role of law in injustice—including "the Nazi problem," "the slavery problem," the colonialism/imperialism problem, the Jim Crow/apartheid problem, etc—and what are the possibilities, challenges, and limits? Theoretical perspectives on the sources/origins and role of law in society will be considered as well as case studies and concrete examples that show how this tool is applied to particular challenges.

Engages the politics of history through multiple frames: subject matter, interpretation, and the epistemological precepts that underwrite history as a discipline. Introduces students to a wide range of interdisciplinary literatures that include different historical methodologies, feminist theory, political theory, queer studies, postcolonial theory, and critical race studies.

Explores the dynamic and contested interaction between politics and policy in the U.S. context, through examining the historical development of key contemporary policy debates and political conflicts. Introduces recent scholarship, drawing on history, sociology, and political economy that has challenged traditional behavioralist approaches to understanding American politics and policy development.

Explores several important topics that have emerged from the renewed interest in political development, and are visible within its scholarship in American Political Development; for example, state-building, institutional change, representation, culture, participation, political identity, and economic and social transformations.

Covers several important themes and sets of readings from the literature on American political development. Topics include the origins and development of American political institutions, the evolution of democratic mechanisms, the rise and fall of social movements, and debates about the sources of policy regimes and political change.

Overview of the major theoretical approaches to the study of comparative politics. This includes diverse literatures such as institutions and political economy, authoritarianism and democracy, and civil society and social movements. Case material is drawn from Latin America, Africa, Europe, North America, Asia and the Pacific.

Introduces the comparative method in social science. Trains students in the use of this method by examining how scholars have used it to compare across national governments, subnational units, public policies, organizations, social movements, and transnational collective action.

Surveys the Latin American political literature by studying: 1) critical moments in political development (e.g., state formation, democratization); 2) important political institutions (e.g., presidentialism, party, and electoral systems); and 3) influential political actors (e.g., unions, business associations, social movements).

Focuses on local government structures and the relationships with other levels of government. Examines institutions and administration; urban political economy (fiscal strain, poverty, inequality, and the efforts to attract economic investment); political machines; race and ethnicity.

Reviews the literatures on property connected to the state, personhood, gender, and legal systems. These conversations take place at the intersection of sociology, jurisprudence, history, economics, and politics in comparative perspective. Course starts with a birds-eye view and progressively hones in on the relation between political economy and family law. Students explore in class discussions and in their research papers closely related issues, including but not limited to intersectionality with race and ethnicity, sexual orientations, different family/household types, in these and other cultural contexts and legal traditions.

Explores topics related to protest and political participation from theoretical and empirical perspectives.

Political thought of anti-colonial movements in comparative, historical perspective, including 18th- to 20th-Century European colonies of America and Asia. Focuses both on the contemporary political thought of these movements as well as on historiographical approaches of secondary literature.

Examines how prominent female Muslim thinkers have interpreted the Islamic tradition since the early 20th century. It surveys how thinkers who belonged to different intellectual traditions (liberal, Marxist, Islamist, feminist, etc.) engaged Islamic exegetical, legal, philosophical, theological and mystical traditions to find answers to the questions raised by their historical and sociopolitical contexts. These questions included: What is/are the Islamic understanding(s) of the purpose of individual and collective lives? What does freewill mean in Islam, and what is its relationship to responsibility towards oneself and one's community? Is there an Islamic notion of justice, and how does it relate to the way justice is defined by other intellectual traditions? What are the legitimate ways of exercising social and political authority to establish the Islamic vision(s) of the good life? How is establishing that vision related to the notion of jihad (striving in the path of God)? What implications does that vision, and its concomitant notions of justice and freewill, have on developing an Islamic understanding of the relationship between different genders, classes, and human groups?

Addresses topics ranging from the core institutions of the party-state to local politics, economic governance, and state-society interactions in multiple realms. Considers China in its own terms while evaluating the relevance of theoretical concepts from various fields in the social sciences. Aims to identify opportunities for new research projects.

Explores if, how, and under what conditions agency and power are diffusing away from the state to non-state actors such as, NGOs/civil society, corporations, and international organizations.

Explores global politics in relation to geo-political formations that are developing in concert with contemporary crises in capitalist globalization, but which are also shaped by a wide range of intersecting racial, sexual, environmental, national, and neocolonial politics as well.

Seminar examines selections from the canonical literature in international relations theory and global political economy through a number of critical lenses, including constructivist, feminist, historical materialist, and subaltern approaches.

Examines genesis of new institutions within the force of social ties and networks. Studies how social and organizational relationships achieve individual or group goals in political and economic life, and influence institutional design. Considers when and what ties contribute to governance and economic performance, and when informal and formal organizations constitute an obstacle.

Two-hour weekly seminar required of teaching assistants in which pedagogic and substantive issues will be considered. The experience of performing teaching assistant duties constitutes subject matter for discussion. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Primarily for first- and second-year graduate students. Students learn the norms and expectations of graduate school and a variety of professional roles. Students develop a plan for their graduate career and for establishing a professional network of mentors and peer audiences for their work.

Individual study undertaken off campus with direct faculty supervision. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Weekly venue for Ph.D. students to present current research, exchange information on sources and resources, discuss and critique epistemologies and methods, and to formulate topics for QE field statements and the dissertation. There are no assigned readings. May be repeated for credit twice.

Weekly seminar for Ph.D. students in which to develop and write extended research papers on selected topics, to present current work, to discuss methods, data sources, and fieldwork, and to receive critiques and assessments from fellow students. May be repeated for credit twice.

A student approaches a member of the staff and proposes to take POLI 297 on a subject he or she has chosen that is not covered in other politics graduate courses or plans a graduate independent study that includes an undergraduate course. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

A student approaches a member of the staff and proposes to take POLI 297 on a subject he or she has chosen that is not covered in other politics graduate courses or plans a graduate independent study that includes an undergraduate course. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

A student approaches a member of the staff and proposes to take POLI 297 on a subject he or she has chosen that is not covered in other politics graduate courses or plans a graduate independent study that includes an undergraduate course. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Enrollment restricted to graduate students and permission of instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Enrollment restricted to graduate students and permission of instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Enrollment restricted to gradaute students and permission of instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.