Courses
Course Archive
Spring 2008
Please find below a list of courses offered by the Department during the Spring 2008 quarter.
21308. Disasters, Narratives, and Philosophy. PQ: Prior familiarity with philosophy or political theory. Political disasters are persistent features of political life (e.g., the Holocaust to 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina). Such events generate great harms that demand some sort of response. But disasters are also persistently disorienting: They disturb our sense of ourselves, of our world, and the relationship between the two. How, then, might ordinary citizens respond productively to such events? This course explores that question through the lens of narrative as a medium of response. Among the questions we ask are: What, precisely, is "disastrous" about such phenomena? What is the place of narrative, or storytelling, in political life? What is the critical and transformative potential of narrative in the face of disasters? How are critique and transformation either enabled or foreclosed by different kinds of stories? The course approaches these questions through engagements with political theory and philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, literary theory, and selected literary works. J. Schiff.
22800. Political Economy of Elections. This course investigates how the economy and elections interact with each other in theory and practice. Students learn how economic conditions affect voters' choices in elections and how the expectations regarding these effects lead politicians to certain policy choices. This course further explores how different electoral institutions shape different economic outcomes by looking at their differential effects on the choices of voters, politicians, and economic actors. J. Park.
24400/54400. Machiavelli and Clausewitz on War. (=FNDL 29311, LLSO 28511, SCTH 31790) A reading and comparison of the two greatest modern thinkers about war. N. Tarcov. (A)
25300. American Political Parties. This course is designed as an introduction to the nature and function of American political parties. We concentrate on two main themes. First, we explore the origins of the American party system. Specific topics include the origin of America's ambivalence toward political parties, the emergence of parties in the U.S., and the institutional foundations of America's two-party system. Second, we investigate the role that political parties play as intermediary institutions between the public and their elected officials. Our studies focus on the role of political parties in the organization of elections and the government. More advanced topics include political realignments, divided government, and the decline of parties hypothesis. J. Grynaviski.
26610. Political Communication Networks. (=LLSO 20911) The focus of this course is to examine empirical evidence to determine if an individual's social context has the ability to impact her political behavior. We examine two major questions: to what extent do we observe correlation between individuals' actions and those within a social framework and to what extent may we identify a causal relationship between the political behavior of the social group and the individual. Specific readings will be drawn from collective action problems, information flow within networks, network formation, and the extent to which we can observe respondents' Voting behaviors which are consistent with their discussants? in surveys or field experiments. B. Sinclair.
28300. Seminar on Realism. The aim of this course is to introduce students to the realist paradigm of international relations. J. Mearsheimer.
28900/39900. Strategy. This course covers American national security policy in the post-cold war world, especially the principal issues of military strategy that are likely to face the United States in the next decade. The course is structured in five parts: (1) examining the key changes in strategic environment since 1990, (2) looking at the effects of multipolarity on American grand strategy and basic national goals, (3) focusing on nuclear strategy, (4) examining conventional strategy, and (5) discussing the future of war and peace in the Pacific Rim. R. Pape. (D)
29200. Civil Rights/Civil Liberties. (=LLSO 24000) PQ: PLSC 28800 or equivalent and consent of instructor. This course examines selected civil rights and civil liberties decisions of U.S. courts with particular emphasis on the broader political context. Areas covered include speech, race, and gender. G. Rosenberg.
29220/39220. The American Founding. The course will consider the political thought of the American founding, beginning with the movement that led to the Revolution and including the debates in the Constitutional Convention, which will comprise the bulk of this course. It will conclude with a brief look at the ratification debate and perhaps look even more briefly at the adoption of the Bill of Rights. M. Zuckert.
30700. Introduction to Linear Models. This course will provide an introduction to the linear model, the dominant form of statistical inference in the social sciences. The goals of the course are to teach students the statistical methods needed to pursue independent large-n research projects and to develop the skills necessary to pursue further methods training in the social sciences. Part I of the course reviews the simple linear model (as seen in Stat 220 or its equivalent) with attention to the theory of statistical inference and the derivation of estimators. Basic calculus and linear algebra will be introduced. Part II extends the linear model to the multivariate case. Emphasis will be placed on model selection and specification. Part III examines the consequences of data that is "poorly behaved" and how to cope with the problem. Part IV introduces special topics like systems of simultaneous equations, logit and probit models, time-series methods, etc. The breadth of coverage depends on time. Relatively little prior knowledge of math or statistics is expected, but students are expected to work hard to develop the tools introduced in class. J. Grynaviski. (E)
31601. Decisionmaking: Principles and Foundations. Individuals, particularly those in leadership positions, are often called upon to make decisions on behalf of others. Such decisions are made in both the public and private spheres and can have enormous influence both on individual lives and on public policy. Lawyers are often called on either to make important decisions themselves or to give counsel to people who make them. The way in which individuals are judged often turns on a handful of decisions they make over the course of their lives, and the way they make these decisions has been the focus of thinkers from Thucydides and Aristotle to Bentham and Kant. It has also been a recurring theme in literature and much of modern economics. The course offers a rigorous study of how philosophers and others have examined these questions, and the tools they have used, including those from behavioral economics and game theory. Included will be discussion of moral dilemmas and of some of the more common pathologies of decision-making: akrasia, self-deception, blind obedience to authority. D. Baird, M. Nussbaum. (A)
36610. Plato's Theaetetus. (=SCTH 36610/GREK 42200) The special focus of this seminar will be to come to a clearer understanding of the relation between Plato's epistemology and his political philosophy. Course will be taught in translation with an additional one hour weekly meeting for students reading Greek to discuss the Greek. D. Allen. (A)
36800. Death, Mourning, and the Politics of Self-Sacrifice in the Middle East. (=ANTH 35915) Open to senior undergraduates and graduates by consent only. This graduate seminar explores suicide bombing, discourses of martyrdom, contestation over gravesites, practices of commemoration, and the imagery of self-sacrifice in the Middle East. Drawing on debates in political science, anthropology, and history, we shall investigate the relevance of military occupation to suicide bombing, the relationships among dying, killing, and state sovereignty, the vexed connections between obligation and consent, changing norms about violence as a mode of political struggle, and the various forms of political solidarity that notions of sacrifice exemplify. This course is theoretically oriented and historically and ethnographically grounded. In contrast to approaches that posit the politics of self-sacrifice as a "problem" in need of a solution or as a peculiarly Middle Eastern phenomenon, this course seeks to de-pathologize such practices by comparing and contrasting them to practices of violence and commemoration in other times and places. Among the authors we will read are Hannah Arendt, Talal Asad, Lara Deeb, Frantz Fanon, Engseng Ho, Thomas Laqueur, Claudio Lomnitz, Robert Pape, Roxanne Varzi, and Slavoj Zizek. L. Wedeen. (C)
37310. Rousseau and Nietzsche on the Philosophic Life. (=SCTH 37310) The tension between the well-ordered community and philosophy, between the political life and the philosophic life, is of crucial importance for Rousseau's thought and for his œuvre as a whole. The subject of The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Rousseau's last and least understood work, is the philosophic life, which is presented in an indirect, fragmented, poetic manner. On closer inspection the Reveries prove to be a masterpiece of political philosophy. This is the first of two seminars I shall teach on the philosophic life focusing on Rousseau and Nietzsche. In the spring of 2009 the subject will be Ecce homo, Nietzsche's last and least understood work. This course will be taught the first five weeks of spring quarter. H. Meier.
39000. Global Justice. Enrollment limited to 15. Undergraduates by consent. What duties do states and societies have beyond their borders? Are obligations of justice global in scope? What is the moral standing of states? This course will examine theories of global distributive and political justice, controversies over cosmopolitan democracy, and theories of human rights, in light of global social structures and international inequalities. We will consider contemporary arguments in political philosophy, sometimes in conversation with texts in the history of political thought. Authors will include Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, Thomas Pogge, Amartya Sen, Thomas Nagel, Iris Marion Young. J. Pitts. (A)
40600. Seminar on International Relations Theory. The end of the Cold War ushered in a new set of debates about how to study international politics. This course is an introduction to some of those important theoretical approaches and is organized around debate among realism, liberalism, and constructivism and their variants. Seminar discussion will identify and criticize the central arguments advanced by different scholars in order to assess the relative merits of different theoretical perspectives. R. Pape. (D)
41500. Seminar on Nationalism in the Age of Globalization. Nationalism has been the most powerful political ideology in the world for the past two centuries. This course examines its future in the age of globalization, focusing in particular on the widespread belief that it is a outmoded ideology. Specific topics covered in the course include: the causes of nationalism, its effects on international stability, nationalism and empires, globalization and the future of the state, globalization and national identities, the clash of civilizations, American nationalism, and the clash between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. J. Mearsheimer. (D)
43410. Introduction to Multilevel Modeling. This course introduces multilevel statistical analysis which deals with complex interaction and classification within the clustered data. Important topics include random-effects vs. fixed-effects models, partial pooling, variance components analysis, prior-posterior analysis, and the interpretation of regression coefficients at different levels of hierarchy. Students are expected to have knowledge of multiple linear regression models. Familiarity with generalized linear models will be helpful but not required. Students will learn how to model various types of relationships in clustered data using statistical software. J. Park. (E)
43600. The Political Thought of W.E.B. DuBois. A close, comparative study of The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Dusk of Dawn (1940). R. Gooding-Williams. (A)
44410. Authoritarian Regimes. The persistence of authoritarian regimes has inspired a major new literature in comparative politics on how non-democracy works. This graduate seminar considers some conceptual and theoretical issues and debates surrounding this new wave of research, such as: How should authoritarian regimes, including so-called "hybrid regimes," best be classified? What kind of institutions makes authoritarianism more or less stable and durable? How do these regimes try to generate compliance? Why do so many of them hold elections and convene parliaments? And what political-economic arrangements tend to bolster or undermine dictatorship? D. Slater. (C)
45200. Transnational Production and Politics. This course is a survey of the organizational, regional, and political economic dynamics involved in the current global transformation of manufacturing. The core concern is with the dynamics that follow from vertical disintegration and the break-up of old style hierarchical firms. Global production networks, regional development and national adjustment experiences in the developing and developed world constitute the cases within which these dynamics play themselves out in the course. G. Herrigel. (C)
50101. Constitutional Law I: Governmental Structure. (=LAWS 40101) This course analyzes the structure of American government, as defined through the text of the Constitution and its interpretation. The major subjects covered are the allocation of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches; the function of judicial review; and the role of the states and the federal government in the federal structure. The student's grade is based on class participation and a take-home final examination. G. Rosenberg. (B)
51200. Law-Philosophy Seminar. PQ: Students are admitted by permission of the instructors. They should submit a c.v. and a statement (reasons for interest in the course, relevant background in law and/or philosophy) by September 20 to Nussbaum and Anderson by e mail. Usual participants include graduate students in philosophy, political science, and divinity, and law students. This is a seminar/workshop most of whose participants are faculty from various area institutions. It admits approximately ten students by permission of the instructors. Its aim is to study, each year, a topic that arises in both philosophy and the law and to ask how bringing the two fields together may yield mutual illumination. There are twelve meetings throughout the year, always on Mondays from 4 to 6 PM. Half of the sessions are led by local faculty, half by visiting speakers. The leader assigns readings for the session (which may be by that person, by other contemporaries, or by major historical figures), and the session consists of a brief introduction by the leader, followed by structured questioning by the two faculty coordinators, followed by general discussion. Students write a 20-25 page seminar paper at the end of the year. The course satisfies the Law School Writing Requirement. The schedule of meetings will be announced by mid-September, and prospective students should submit their credentials to both instructors by September 20. Past themes have included: practical reason; equality; privacy; autonomy; global justice; pluralism and toleration; war; sexuality and family. The theme for 2006-7 will be Coercion. People whom we are planning to invite include Catharine MacKinnon, Stephen Schulhofer, Cass Sunstein, Bernard Harcourt, Marcia Baron, and Alan Wertheimer. M. Nussbaum, S. Anderson.(A)
