ENROLL

Christina Farhart

Kimberly Smith

Summer Forester

In the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. launched the Global War on Terror to purportedly find, stop,and defeat every terrorist group with a global reach. Without question, the Global War on Terror has radically shaped everything from U.S. foreign policies and domestic institutions to civil liberties and pop culture. In this course, we will examine the events of 9/11 and then critically assess the immediate and long-term ramifications of the endless Global War on Terror on different states and communities around the world. While we will certainly spend time interrogating U.S. policies from the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, we will also examine reactions to those policies across both the global north and the global south.

Bob Carlson

Requires participation in OCS Program: Sport and Globalization in London and Seville

Dev Gupta

Nationalism is an ideology that political actors have frequently harnessed to support a wide variety of policies ranging from intensive economic development to genocide. But what is nationalism? Where does it come from? And what gives it such emotional and political power? This course investigates competing ideas about the sources of nationalism, its evolution, and its political uses in state building, legitimation, development, and war. We will consider both historic examples of nationalism, as well as contemporary cases drawn from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the United States.

Paul Petzschmann

Why is the world divided territorially? Why are some states considered more powerful than others? What can be done about violent conflict? This course will introduce students with critical approaches to world politics that ask these and other big questions. Marxist, feminist, post-structuralist and post-colonial scholars have challenged classical approaches of thinking about the international in terms of states and power. They have also questioned the dominance of western conceptions of politics in the way political scientists view the world. In this course will read and debate their contributions and apply them to real cases. 

Mihaela Czobor-Lupp

Brian F Harrison

Many Americans sense that polarization makes governance harder; scholars argue that polarization can undermine democracy itself. How do we manage difficult problems in a polarized political era? Can we ever agree if we are so free to pursue information that only supports what we already believe? We examine group identity in American culture and how boundaries affect attitudes and behavior as well as information around policy disputes around incarceration/policing, free speech, LGBTQ rights, health care, elections, immigration, and more. Finally, we consider how to reduce unproductive polarization for a better America even when we don’t agree on what better entails.

Brian F Harrison

In recent years we have heard a lot about “identity politics.” This course aims to answer the question, why do people form group-based identities and how do they impact mass political attitudes and behavior? Using examples from American politics, we will examine the psychological underpinnings of identity and group-based affiliations as well as their political consequences. In doing so, we will explore how bias, prejudice, and social hierarchy are formed, maintained, and changed. Such evaluations will be based on discussions of various dominant and minority group identities including partisanship, race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and place. Students will learn how and where the United States has progressed in promoting group equality and fairness and where it has not or has even moved backwards. Students end the course with a deeper understanding of the core American paradox of the persistence of group hierarchy in a country dedicated to democracy, equality, and liberty and what people can do to resolve that paradox.

Summer Forester

How have gendered divisions of power, labor, and resources contributed to the global crises of violence, sustainability, and inequity? Where and why has the pursuit of gender justice elicited intense backlash, especially within the last two decades? In this course, we will explore the global consequences of gender inequality and the ongoing pursuit of gender justice both transnationally and in different regions of the world. We will investigate a variety of cases ranging from land rights movements in East Africa, to the international movement to ban nuclear weapons. Finally, we will pay special attention to how hard-won gains in women’s rights and other related inequalities in world affairs are being jeopardized by new and old authoritarianisms.

Huan Gao

This course explores theories about spaces/places and investigates the impact of our physical environment on a broad range of social and political issues. We will look at how parks, monuments, residential communities, and other features of our cities and towns are made, who makes them, and in turn, their effects on our daily lives. Students will engage with important contemporary issues such as residential segregation, public space management, protest policing, etc. Most of the course will focus on urban politics, with a brief foray into rural issues. The goal of this course is to encourage students to think about everyday environmental features in a more systematic and theoretic manner and design social scientific inquiries into spatial issues.