Courses
Course Archive
Courses Autumn 2005
Please find below a list of courses offered by the department during the Autumn 2005 quarter.
20606. Feminism, Historical Materialism, Critique. This is an introductory level course in political theory on the conceptual, historical and methodological relationship between second-wave feminism and historical materialism. The categories of class, revolution, the market, resistance, consciousness, capital, as well as the categories of 'feminism' and 'Marxism' themselves will be central to our inquiry. Readings include texts by Marx, Engels, de Beauvoir, Monique Wittig, Raya Dunayevskaya, Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray and Herbert Marcuse. A. Chari. Autumn.
20810. Just War in Comparative Perspective. Do ways of thinking about justice and warfare differ across time, space and religion? Beginning with an exploration of the roots of Western Just War thinking in the ancient world (Greece, Rome and Israel), this course explores traditional just war thinking in Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. By examining the evolution of just war thought in a historical and comparative context, the course illustrates the ways in which concepts of justice may be contingent both on a society's religious/ethical beliefs and its military capabilities. Finally, the course asks: is just war theory still relevant today? What can just war theories say in the face of new threats, such as weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and counter-insurgency warfare? V. Morkevicius. Autumn.
20905. The Meaning of Life. (=PHIL 21500) This course explores the nature of the most basic question we may ask ourselves: how should we lead our lives? What sort of question is this? What is involved in reflecting, not simply upon whether this action is right or that trait is admirable, but upon what a life should be like as a whole? Do we discover the meaning of life, or do we create it for ourselves? Is only the reflective life worth living? Topics also include conversion, life-plans, and fear of death. Readings from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Nietzsche, Berlin, I. Murdoch, S. Hampshire, Rawls, B. Williams, and T. Nagel. C. Larmore, Autumn.
21016. Still Married? United States and Emergent European Union: Dynamics of Cooperation, Cooptation, Competition. The expansion and continuing institutionalization of the European Union, now comprising 25 countries, will be examined in relation to American foreign and domestic policies. The logic of the course is twofold: 1) to understand how the EU is structured, and what are the political challenges and logics driving it; 2) to relate these developments to America's own political and economic interests. We will try to answer the following questions: What is the relevance of the US-EU relationship? What are the fields of contention? Can and should a Trans-Atlantic alliance persist in time? How? M. Colombi. Autumn.
21106. Introduction to Feminist Political Theories. This course will offer an introduction to feminist theories, with a special focus on their political significance. The aim is to familiarize students with the central concepts and arguments developed in feminist literature, and to help them critically assess their force and originality. One of the main concepts will be gender, with special attention to its critical force. Other themes and concepts discussed will be equality and difference, gender justice, the role of family, the public/private divide, and motherhood. We will try to trace how feminist arguments have evolved historically looking at how sometimes similar arguments have taken different shape in diverse historical contexts. M. Marin. Autumn.
21206. Identity in International Relations. What does 'identity' as a concept bring to the study of international relations? What is meant by the term and what leverage does it provide? The purpose of this course is to examine in depth the various ways in which the concept of identity has been employed within international relations scholarship. The primary focus of the course will be on how identity as a social theoretical concept has been explicitly incorporated into theoretical understandings of state behavior, including those of mainstream constructivist, post-structuralist, and feminist approaches. Every week will address a different theoretical issue or approach, and students will be encouraged to critically examine the strengths and weaknesses of each. The target audience of this course will be primarily advanced undergraduates. Students will be expected to already have a significant grasp of the fundamentals of international relations theory, as this course will be dealing with relatively complex approaches. A key goal of this course will be to impart a theoretical understanding of how the concept of identity can be used to explain empirical phenomena in international relations. T. Hall. Autumn.
21600/32600. World Politics in the 20th Century, 1945-1991: A History. This course provides a survey of major wars, the development of states' military and financial capacity, imperial retreat, diplomatic alignments and alliances, arrangements for international trade and investment, as well as efforts to create international institutions. It surveys the history of modern inter-state relations in the latter half of the 20th century. It focuses on the Cold War and the development of an integrated world economy under U.S. leadership. It deals with key elements of international history needed for further study of international politics and IR theory, including long-term trends in diplomacy, economic development, and military force. C. Lipson. Autumn. (D)
27815. Politics and Public Policy in China. This course offers a historical and thematic survey to Chinese politics in the twentieth century. Particular attention is given to the formation of the party-state, the imposition of central planning, the Great Leap forward, the Cultural Revolution, reform and liberalization, and China's role in the world in the post-cold war era. The discussion is framed in terms that allow comparison with other countries. D. Yang. Autumn.
28000/38000. Organization, Ideology, and Political Change. This course centers on the comparative analysis of the emergence and institutionalization of public bureaucracies in the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the former Soviet Union. The aim is to see whether there are distinctly different patterns of organizational rationality or whether bureaucracies are all culturally unique. B. Silberman. Autumn. (C)
28610. Psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and the Emotional Life. This course explores commonalities among psychoanalytic theory, Buddhism, and studies of emotions and brain physiology, particularly as they relate to questions of the self and political life. In addition to exploring each these theories, we will investigate particular questions like the inevitability of conflict, the dynamics of obedience and authority, the emotional power of ideology and non-Western understandings of human consciousness. E. Oliver. Autumn.
29000/39800. Introduction to International Relations. This course introduces the main themes in international relations, including the problems of war and peace, conflict and cooperation. We begin by considering some basic theoretical tools used to study international politics. We then focus on several prominent security issues in modern international relations, such as the cold war and post-cold war world, nuclear weapons, nationalism, and terrorism. We also deal with economic aspects of international relations, such as globalization, world trade, environmental pollution, and European unification. C. Lipson. Autumn. (D)
29800. B.A. Paper Colloquium. PQ: Required of fourth-year political science majors who plan to write a B.A. paper. Students participate in both Autumn and Winter Quarters but register only once (in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter). The colloquium, which may be organized along methodological or field lines, meets weekly in the Autumn Quarter and biweekly in the Winter Quarter to provide students with a forum within which research problems are addressed, conceptual frameworks are refined, and drafts of the B.A. paper are presented and critiqued. Autumn.
29900. B.A. Paper. PQ: Required of fourth-year political science majors who write a B.A. paper. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. This is a reading and research course for independent study related to B.A. research and B.A. paper preparation. Autumn.
30200. Political Economy of Public Policy. (=PBPL 30800) A survey of formal political analysis on game theory, collective action, the Arrow problems, and elections. D. Snidal. Autumn. (E)
30500. Introduction to Data Analysis. This course is an introduction to the research methods practiced by quantitative political scientists. The first part lays out the enterprise of empirical research: the structure and content of theories, the formulation of testable hypotheses, the logic of empirical tests, and the consideration of competing hypotheses. The second part considers the implementation of empirical research: the potential barriers to valid inferences, the strengths and limitations of research designs, and empirical representations of theoretical constructs. The final part provides hands-on experience with the two kinds of analyses most frequently performed by quantitative political researchers: contingency tables and regression. E. Oliver. Autumn. (E)
32115. Machiavelli and the Arthashastra. (=FNDL 29313) PQ: Consent of instructor. A comparative reading of Machiavelli's Prince and Discourses on Livy and Kautilya's Arthashastra. N. Tarcov, W. Doniger. Autumn. (A)
40302. American Indian Law and Politics. (=LAWS 80302) Enrollment limited to 25. This course will survey the evolution and present state of American Indian law and politics in the United States, with a primary focus on federal-tribal relations and secondary emphases on state-tribal relations and the government of reservations themselves. Topics will include treaties; land rights; sovereignty; allotment and termination; federal jurisdiction over reservations; religious freedom; and civil liberties issues on reservations. Option of a research paper or a final exam. J. Levy. Autumn. (B)
40810. Practical Reason. (=PHIL 51500) In this seminar we will examine some of most notable recent work on the means and ends of practical reasoning as well as on the nature of reasons and of normativity in general. Books discussed will include Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings; Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity; and Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other. There will also be discussion of essays by Williams, Frankfurt, Raz, McDowell, and Dancy. C. Larmore, Autumn. (A)
42500. Postcolonial Political Theory. How do issues of global politics, freedom, oppression, equality, cultural difference race, and imperialism look from the point of view of 20th century thinkers outside Europe and North America, but interacting with them? This course will consider this question by considering texts of political and social theorists and critics from India, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Many of these writings respond to the context of colonialism at the historic moment of transformation to independence, and others reflect on the relationship of European politics and European ideas to aspirations for freedom in the other continents. Writers we are likely to read include: Mahatma Gandhi, Partha Chatterjee, Frantz Fanon, Leopold Senghor, Edward Glissant, Carols Rangle, Enrique Dussel, Gayatri Spivak, Emmanuel Eze, Ofelia Schutte, and Walter Mignolo. I Young. Autumn. (A)
43100. Maximum Likelihood. The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with the estimation and interpretation of maximum likelihood, a statistical method which permits a close linkage of deductive theory and empirical estimation. Among the problems considered in this course include: models of dichotomous choice, such as turnout and vote choice; models of limited categorical data, such as those for multi-party elections and survey responses; models for counts of uncorrelated events, such as executive orders and bookburnings; models for duration, such as the length of parliamentary coalitions or the tenure of bureaucracies; models for compositional data, such as allocation of time by bureaucrats to task and district vote shares; and models for latent variables, such as for predispositions. The emphasis in this course will be on the extraction of information about political and social phenomena, not upon properties of estimators. J. Brehm. Autumn. (E)
50600. Japanese Political Institutions. B. Silberman. Autumn. (C)
55400. Introduction to Comparative Politics. The purpose of this seminar is to acquaint students with the leading debates having to do with the social and economic bases for political outcomes. Topics include: political development and modernization; democracy, dictatorship and regime change; revolution; political culture and political attitudes; preference formation, social alignments and political parties; interest intermediation; states and markets; and the comparative method. C. Boix. Autumn. (C)
