This course is designed to introduce students to comparative political analysis. How can the political behavior, circumstances, institutions, and dynamic patterns of change that people experience in very different societies be analyzed using the same set of concepts and theories? Key themes include nationalism, political culture, democratization, authoritarianism, and the nature of protracted conflict.

Understanding and interpreting large, quantitative data sets is increasingly central in political and social science. Whether one seeks to understand political communication, international trade, inter-group conflict, or a host of other issues, the availability of large quantities of digital data has revolutionized the study of politics. Nonetheless, most data-related courses focus on statistical estimation, rather than on the related but distinctive problems of data acquisition, management and visualization - in a term, data science. This course seeks to address that imbalance by focusing squarely on the tools of data science. Leaving this course, students will be able to acquire, format, analyze, and visualize various types of political data using the statistical programming language R. This course is not a statistics class, but it will increase the capacity of students to thrive in future statistics classes. ENTERING THIS CLASS... students are expected to have a basic familiarity with computation. While no background in statistics, political science is required, students are expected to be generally familiar with contemporarycomputing environments (e.g. know how to use a computer) and have a willingness to learn a wide variety of data science tools.

Understanding and interpreting large, quantitative data sets is increasingly central in political and social science. Whether one seeks to understand political communication, international trade, inter-group conflict, or a host of other issues, the availability of large quantities of digital data has revolutionized the study of politics. Nonetheless, most data-related courses focus on statistical estimation, rather than on the related but distinctive problems of data acquisition, management and visualization - in a term, data science. This course seeks to address that imbalance by focusing squarely on the tools of data science. Leaving this course, students will be able to acquire, format, analyze, and visualize various types of political data using the statistical programming language R. This course is not a statistics class, but it will increase the capacity of students to thrive in future statistics classes. ENTERING THIS CLASS... students are expected to have a basic familiarity with computation. While no background in statistics, political science is required, students are expected to be generally familiar with contemporarycomputing environments (e.g. know how to use a computer) and have a willingness to learn a wide variety of data science tools.

Understanding and interpreting large, quantitative data sets is increasingly central in political and social science. Whether one seeks to understand political communication, international trade, inter-group conflict, or a host of other issues, the availability of large quantities of digital data has revolutionized the study of politics. Nonetheless, most data-related courses focus on statistical estimation, rather than on the related but distinctive problems of data acquisition, management and visualization - in a term, data science. This course seeks to address that imbalance by focusing squarely on the tools of data science. Leaving this course, students will be able to acquire, format, analyze, and visualize various types of political data using the statistical programming language R. This course is not a statistics class, but it will increase the capacity of students to thrive in future statistics classes. ENTERING THIS CLASS... students are expected to have a basic familiarity with computation. While no background in statistics, political science is required, students are expected to be generally familiar with contemporarycomputing environments (e.g. know how to use a computer) and have a willingness to learn a wide variety of data science tools.

Understanding and interpreting large, quantitative data sets is increasingly central in political and social science. Whether one seeks to understand political communication, international trade, inter-group conflict, or a host of other issues, the availability of large quantities of digital data has revolutionized the study of politics. Nonetheless, most data-related courses focus on statistical estimation, rather than on the related but distinctive problems of data acquisition, management and visualization - in a term, data science. This course seeks to address that imbalance by focusing squarely on the tools of data science. Leaving this course, students will be able to acquire, format, analyze, and visualize various types of political data using the statistical programming language R. This course is not a statistics class, but it will increase the capacity of students to thrive in future statistics classes. ENTERING THIS CLASS... students are expected to have a basic familiarity with computation. While no background in statistics, political science is required, students are expected to be generally familiar with contemporarycomputing environments (e.g. know how to use a computer) and have a willingness to learn a wide variety of data science tools.

Freshmen seminars are small, substantive courses taught by members of the faculty and open only to freshmen. These seminars offer an excellent opportunity to explore areas not represented in high school curricula and to establish relationships with faculty members around areas of mutual interest. See www.college.upenn.edu/admissions/freshmen.php

Freshmen seminars are small, substantive courses taught by members of the faculty and open only to freshmen. These seminars offer an excellent opportunity to explore areas not represented in high school curricula and to establish relationships with faculty members around areas of mutual interest. See www.college.upenn.edu/admissions/freshmen.php

This course is designed to provide an overview of the variety of ideas, approaches, and subfields within feminist political thought. Readings and divided into three sections: contemporary theorizing about the meaning of "feminism";women in the history of Western political thought; and feminist theoretical approaches to practical political problems and issues, such as abortion and sexual assault.

This course is an introduction to the field of political communication, conceptual approaches to analyzing communication in various forms, including advertising, speech making, campaign debates, and candidates' and office-holders' uses of news. The focus of this course is on the interplay in the U.S. between television and politics. The course includes a history of televised campaign practices from the 1952 presidential contest onward.

This course will provide an overview of major figures and themes of modern political thought. We will focus on themes and questions pertinent to political theory in the modern era, particularly focusing on the relationship of the individual to community, society, and state. Although the emergence of the individual as a central moral, political, and conceptual category arguably began in earlier eras, it is in the seventeenth century that it takes firm hold in defining the state, political institutions, moral thinking, and social relations. The centrality of "the individual" has created difficulties, even paradoxes, for community and social relations, and political theorists have struggled to reconicle those throughout the modern era. We will consider the political forms that emerged out of those struggles, as well as the changed and distinctly "modern" conceptualizations of political theory such as freedom, responsibilty, justice, rights and obligations, as central categories for organizing moral and political life.