Consult the department for detailed descriptions or if you think the course could count toward a subfield other than International Relations. More than one course may be taken in a given semester.

Consult the political science department or Paideia program for detailed descriptions. More than one course make be taken in a given semester.

Consult the political science department or Paideia program for detailed descriptions. More than one course make be taken in a given semester.

Consult department for detailed descriptions. Recent topics include: Globalization; Race & Criminal Justice; Democracy & Markets in Postcommunist Europe.

Law, Religion, and Politics addresses the contemporary interplay between government, religion, and politics with focus on the legislative and Supreme Court forces that are re-defining the free exercise of religion and the separation of church and state. Due to the rise in statutory, extreme religious liberty statutes at the federal and state levels, the drive to establish "religious autonomy," and the concomitant push to undermine the separation of church and state, the balance of power between religion, government, and the people has shifted dramatically. The seminar will survey the leading Supreme Court cases and then be organized around specific contemporary issues including abortion and contraception, vaccination and healthcare, discrimination against LGBTQ couples and individuals, discrimination against church employees, and clergy sex abuse.

The purpose of this course is to explore the political dynamics that shape the debate, enactment, and implementation of policies to address climate change. By reading the latest research on the political determinants of climate policy, the course will help students develop a nuanced understanding of the ideas, institutions, and behaviors that structure the climate policy process. We will focus primarily on climate policy and politics in the United States, while occasionally incorporating comparative perspectives to provide insight into the US case. Throughout the course, we will discuss why climate policies are designed in particular ways; when and why policies pass or fail to pass; how various institutional, organizational, and public interests influence the climate policy process; and what questions remain unanswered about how to address the problem of climate change.

The early 1950s may have been the nadir for modern American conservatism. Conservative hero Robert Taft had lost the Republican nomination for President to a more moderate candidate for the third time, many in the Republican Party had moved to accept some of the most popular New Deal programs, and a moderate, internationalist consensus had taken hold in the country. Yet, from these ashes, conservatism rose to become a potent political force — maybe the driving force — in the United States over the last half century. This seminar explores the contours of that rise, beginning with infrastructure laid and coalitions forged in the 1950s and early 1960s. We will see how conservatives built upon this infrastructure to overcome Barry Goldwater’s crushing 1964 defeat to elect one of their own, Ronald Reagan, president in 1980. Reagan’s presidency transformed the public philosophy and helped shape subsequent American political development. Our study of conservatism will also include the struggles that conservatives confronted in trying to enact their ideas into public policy, and the repercussions of those struggles.
We will explore conservatism’s triumphs and failures politically, as well as the cultural changes that have helped, hindered, and shaped its rise. In many ways, this class is a study in the transformation of American politics and in American culture over the last sixty-five years. Its focus is on the hows and the whys of the rise of conservatism from the low point of the early 50s to the rise of Trumpism in the 2010s. In many places, we will discover a surprisingly complex story. This complexity means that we must grapple with clashing interpretations as to why and how conservatism developed, why conservatism appealed to many Americans at various points in time, and even whether there was an agreed upon conservative vision unifying the forces pushing America rightward.
The seminar will be oriented chronologically to the degree that it is possible, spending several weeks on each decade between the 1960s and the 2010s, Yet, we will also focus on several themes and relationships throughout the class. These include the role played by certain pivotal political figures, the ideas that propelled conservatism and bound the conservative movement together, the relationship between conservatives and the Republican Party, the tensions within the diverse Reagan coalition (which have spilled over with increasing regularity, especially during the 2010s) and the impact of the courts and the conservative legal movement in seeding conservatism over the last 30 years. We will ask critical and often difficult questions involving topics such as the role of racism and bigotry in the rise of conservatism. We will also consider the big picture—is the United States really any more conservative in 2023 than it was in 1950? If not, why do many consider conservatism to have risen politically? At the end of the semester we will ponder whether some of the current conservative divisions are new, or continuations of fissures that have long existed and we will consider the big picture in American politics: are our divisions too big to foster functional governance?

This course seeks to understand contemporary political divisions in the United States. Guiding our analysis will be scholarship from the discipline of political science, with particular attention given to political culture, American political development and federalism while incorporating scholarship from several other disciplines. As we study political culture at the national level, we will unpack our own individual attitudes towards politics. There will be an emphasis throughout the course on personal wellness during dialogue with assignments ranging from written reflections on experiences to textual analysis to their combination.

This undergraduate seminar is for advanced undergraduates seeking to make sense of the upsurge in racist activism, combined with authoritarian populism and neo-fascist mobilization in many parts of the world. Contemporary manifestations of the phenomena noted above will be examined in a comparative and historical perspective to identify patterns and anomalies across various multiple nation-states. France, The United States, Britain, and Italy will be the countries examined.

This course surveys the ways conservatives have related to capitalism over time and across
countries. It is designed to bridge theory, history, and national comparison to shed light on urgent contemporary policy choices facing conservatives of all kinds. One section explores the philosophical underpinnings of the major strains of conservatism, emphasizing their concern with inherited institutions (church and family), community (local and especially national), social and cultural hierarchies, and the fundamental value of individual (as opposed to corporate) property ownership. Markets are an inherent challenge to each, as we see in a historical section that traces the rise of commercial society generally and then capitalism in its trading, industrial, financial, hi-tech, and state-based forms. How conservatives negotiated the changing world is observable in three related modes: the intellectual output of leading thinkers, the demands of social movements, and the policies of governing parties. Together they have, of course, shaped capitalism itself—from Bismarck’s creation of social insurance in Germany to Friedman's influential promotion of shareholder value, to the recent wave of populist-nationalist suspicion of international trade and Wall Street. What unites successful conservatives across the world, however, has been their management of the fundamental dilemmas of capitalism: the permanence of change, the amoral & cosmopolitan character of economic relations, and the fragility of established institutions. Course is open to all students and is offered on campus.