This course explores the creation and transformations of the American constitutional system's structures and goals from the nation's founding through the period of Progressive reforms, the rise of the Jim Crow system, and the Spanish American War. Issues include the division of powers between state and national governments, and the branches of the federal government; economic powers of private actors and government regulators; the authority of governments to enforce or transform racial and gender hierarchies; and the extent of religious and expressive freedoms and rights of persons accused of crimes. We will pay special attention to the changing role of the Supreme Court and its decisions in interpreting and shaping American constitutionalism, and we will also read legislative and executive constitutional arguments, party platforms, and other influential statements of American constitutional thought.

This course explores the creation and transformations of the American constitutional system's structures and goals from the nation's founding through the period of Progressive reforms, the rise of the Jim Crow system, and the Spanish American War. Issues include the division of powers between state and national governments, and the branches of the federal government; economic powers of private actors and government regulators; the authority of governments to enforce or transform racial and gender hierarchies; and the extent of religious and expressive freedoms and rights of persons accused of crimes. We will pay special attention to the changing role of the Supreme Court and its decisions in interpreting and shaping American constitutionalism, and we will also read legislative and executive constitutional arguments, party platforms, and other influential statements of American constitutional thought.

This course explores the creation and transformations of the American constitutional system's structures and goals from the nation's founding through the period of Progressive reforms, the rise of the Jim Crow system, and the Spanish American War. Issues include the division of powers between state and national governments, and the branches of the federal government; economic powers of private actors and government regulators; the authority of governments to enforce or transform racial and gender hierarchies; and the extent of religious and expressive freedoms and rights of persons accused of crimes. We will pay special attention to the changing role of the Supreme Court and its decisions in interpreting and shaping American constitutionalism, and we will also read legislative and executive constitutional arguments, party platforms, and other influential statements of American constitutional thought.

This course introduces students to the complex issues surrounding questions of political and economic development in India, the world's largest democracy, and home to a large chunk of the globe's low-income population. Not surprisingly, the successes and failures of India are tremendously important to the study of democracy and development. The experiences of countries in this region have given rise to influential theories of development. The policy prescriptions these theories have produced have in turn been applied back onto India, with spectacular results- both positive and negative. Over the course of the semester, we will use the concrete experiences from the past seven decades in India to ask and answer fundamental questions about development, including: Does democratic politics help or hurt prospects for economic development? Why are some poor countries like India are able to maintain democracies, while equally poor countries in the region, such as Pakistan, are not? How did British colonialism shape the nature of post-colonial development? Should the state or the market play a dominant role in the economies of newly independent nations? How can we best measure poverty, and what have been the challenges to reducing it in the developing world? What are the challenges and opportunities produced by rapid international migration to rich countries? The course is divided into four thematic units, which build upon one another. Within each theme, we draw from a wide array of source materials, reading scholarship in political science, economics, sociology, and anthropology, journalistic non-fiction, and even film. While empirically focusing on India, we will also read about the experiences of other countries in South Asia, and also from East Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan African in specific weeks. This will help students place the experiences of South Asian countries in broader comparative perspective.

Consult department for detailed descriptions. More than one section may be given in a semester. Recent titles have included: Interpreting the Canon; State, Self, & Society; U.S. Policy in Europe; and Dissertation Writing.

The main goal of this course is to familiarize students with experiments, quasi-experiments, survey experiments and field experiments as they are widely used in the social sciences. Some introductory level statistics background will be assumed, though this is a research design course, not a statistics course. By the end of the course, students will be expected to develop their own original experimental design that makes some original contribution to knowledge. Throughout the course of the semester, we will also consider how to deal with the issue of causality as it occurs in observational studies, and draw parallels to experimental research.

This seminar offers graduate students an introduction to the subfield of international relations labeled strategic studies (or security studies). In addition to exploring key theoretical issues, we consider their usefulness for understanding relevant events in international politics since World War II. Although the course emphasizes the distinctive features of great power strategy in the nuclear age, we also look at the continuing role of conventional forces, the strategic choices of lesser powers, and selected security problems in the post-Cold War world (e.g., proliferation, terrorism).