In what ways has Western Political Theory constructed, excluded, and denigrated gendered and sexualized political subjects? In what ways have these subjects resisted these politics, and organized for their freedom and sovereignty? This course will explore feminist political theories of the body, reproduction, and empire through a variety of theoretical styles and methodological approaches, including historical, textual, interpretative, ethnographic, and literary. Liberalism, Marxist feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, Black feminism, Chicana feminism, and Indigenous feminism will be explored throughout the semester. The course will be taught as a seminar and will be discussion-based. Students can expect to read 75-150 pages a week.

This course introduces students to fundamental moral questions about countries and individuals’ membership in them. Do people owe more to their compatriots than to foreigners? Is it desirable – or at least permissible – for countries to have and promote a national identity? What different forms can patriotism take, and in which (if any) of these forms is it a virtue? Should we all be “citizens of the world"? These questions will be explored primarily through readings in contemporary moral and political philosophy.

This course is a basic introduction to certain fundamental topics in political theory. It
aims to provide students with concepts and ideas by which to more clearly make sense
of political reality. In general, the course proceeds by elucidating major distinctions,
such as: ancient vs. modern; deontology vs. consequentialism; “Athens” vs. “Jerusalem”
(or: reason vs. revelation); thinking vs. knowing; liberalism vs. democracy; sovereign
power vs. disciplinary power; being secular vs. being a secularist; politics as subset of
morality vs. political responsibility as requiring the transgression of morality; the
grounds of legitimate authority (tradition vs. legal-rational vs. charisma); etc. Overall,
the course has three goals: (i) to introduce students to alternate approaches to the
practice of political theory; (ii) to introduce students to numerous relatively selfcontained debates important to contemporary political theorists; and (iii) to address
major figures from the history of political thought, with an eye toward explaining what
makes them vital to political theorists today.

This course is designed to investigate the relationship, if any, between ethics and politics. During the semester, we’ll examine texts of political, social, and feminist theory as well as case studies, dialogues, novels, non-fiction essays, short stories, newspaper and magazine articles and film to critically engage with questions such as: Can politics be a moral enterprise or is it a realm where violence, deception and cruelty are and must be routine? How do we judge whether a political act is ethical or unethical? Does the context of war negate the moral precepts that hold in peacetime? Do national borders mark the place where our moral commitments to others end? Who’s included in the “we” that determines the content of moral judgments and the reach of our ethical obligations? How do inequalities of wealth, power and the burden of history help determine whose pain counts and whose voices are heard in moral arguments? Along the way, we’ll examine whether and to what extent the diverse genres, style and form of these texts influences how receptive we are the perspectives and arguments they contain. We’ll also consider how our class discussions might serve as experiments in what it means to think, argue and act ethically with one another.

The purpose of this course is to explore the political dynamics that shape the debate, enactment, and implementation of policies to address climate change. By reading the latest research on the political determinants of climate policy, the course will help students develop a nuanced understanding of the ideas, institutions, and behaviors that structure the climate policy process. We will focus primarily on climate policy and politics in the United States, while occasionally incorporating comparative perspectives to provide insight into the US case. Throughout the course, we will discuss why climate policies are designed in particular ways; when and why policies pass or fail to pass; how various institutional, organizational, and public interests influence the climate policy process; and what questions remain unanswered about how to address the problem of climate change.

This class explores whether or not America, and its politics, are divided. Is the American public polarized? What about political elites? Is there any connection between mass and elite polarization? What do we even mean when we say some group is “polarized”? This class will explore these questions in some detail. We will begin at the elite level and ask whether or the political class is now more polarized than it was a half century ago. The answer will be a fairly unambiguous “yes.” We’ll then explore several different explanations for why elites have become more divided since mid-century. After that, we’ll turn our attention to the mass public. The situation there will be considerably more complicated, with evidence both for and against polarization. We’ll explore this evidence in some detail and try to document the ways in which the American public has—and has not—become more polarization over time, paying attention to differences based on issues as well as affect/sentiment toward the other party. Finally, we’ll conclude by exploring the effects of polarization on the legislative process and the mass electorate, and ask what (if anything) can or should be done about polarization.

The early 1950s may have been the nadir for modern American conservatism. Conservative hero Robert Taft had lost the Republican nomination for President to a more moderate candidate for the third time, many in the Republican Party had moved to accept some of the most popular New Deal programs, and a moderate, internationalist consensus had taken hold in the country. Yet, from these ashes, conservatism rose to become a potent political force — maybe the driving force — in the United States over the last half century. This seminar explores the contours of that rise, beginning with infrastructure laid and coalitions forged in the 1950s and early 1960s. We will see how conservatives built upon this infrastructure to overcome Barry Goldwater’s crushing 1964 defeat to elect one of their own, Ronald Reagan, president in 1980. Reagan’s presidency transformed the public philosophy and helped shape subsequent American political development. Our study of conservatism will also include the struggles that conservatives confronted in trying to enact their ideas into public policy, and the repercussions of those struggles.
We will explore conservatism’s triumphs and failures politically, as well as the cultural changes that have helped, hindered, and shaped its rise. In many ways, this class is a study in the transformation of American politics and in American culture over the last sixty-five years. Its focus is on the hows and the whys of the rise of conservatism from the low point of the early 50s to the rise of Trumpism in the 2010s. In many places, we will discover a surprisingly complex story. This complexity means that we must grapple with clashing interpretations as to why and how conservatism developed, why conservatism appealed to many Americans at various points in time, and even whether there was an agreed upon conservative vision unifying the forces pushing America rightward.
The seminar will be oriented chronologically to the degree that it is possible, spending several weeks on each decade between the 1960s and the 2010s, Yet, we will also focus on several themes and relationships throughout the class. These include the role played by certain pivotal political figures, the ideas that propelled conservatism and bound the conservative movement together, the relationship between conservatives and the Republican Party, the tensions within the diverse Reagan coalition (which have spilled over with increasing regularity, especially during the 2010s) and the impact of the courts and the conservative legal movement in seeding conservatism over the last 30 years. We will ask critical and often difficult questions involving topics such as the role of racism and bigotry in the rise of conservatism. We will also consider the big picture—is the United States really any more conservative in 2023 than it was in 1950? If not, why do many consider conservatism to have risen politically? At the end of the semester we will ponder whether some of the current conservative divisions are new, or continuations of fissures that have long existed and we will consider the big picture in American politics: are our divisions too big to foster functional governance?

This course seeks to understand contemporary political divisions in the United States. Guiding our analysis will be scholarship from the discipline of political science, with particular attention given to political culture, American political development and federalism while incorporating scholarship from several other disciplines. As we study political culture at the national level, we will unpack our own individual attitudes towards politics. There will be an emphasis throughout the course on personal wellness during dialogue with assignments ranging from written reflections on experiences to textual analysis to their combination.

The goal of this class is to build upon the content of PSCI 1801 and expose students to
the process by which quantitative political science research is conducted, The class will take us down three separate, but related tracks. Before engaging in any statistical analysis, we must think about why we engaging in that analysis. Thus, the first track will cover the
basics of research design. Topics discussed will include what makes a good model, the art
of theory building, the difference between a theory and a hypothesis, and common research designs. The second track will cover several statistical techniques that are frequently used in quantitative political science research that build upon multivariate regression analysis. Two types of statistical techniques will be emphasized. The first half of the course will focus on important statistical concepts for conducting research using survey data. Topics we cover include sampling strategies, estimating uncertainty, non-response, measurement error, and working with categorical variables. The second half of the course will focus on methods for establishing causal relationship between independent and dependent variables. Topics we will cover include the potential outcomes framework, experiments, panel data, instrumental variables, and regression discontinuity designs. Finally, we need to be able to communicate the results of our statistical analyses to interested consumers. Thus, track three will cover how we write-up the results of a statistical analysis. Students are expected to have taken PSCI 1801 or another course that covers multivariate regression analysis using R.

Jobs in data science are quickly proliferating throughout nearly every industry in the American economy. The purpose of this class is to build the statistics, programming, and qualitative skills that are required to excel in data science. The substantive focus of the class will largely be on topics related to politics and elections, although the technical skills can be applied to any subject matter.