Conspiratorial thinking is nothing new in American politics. Since the founding of the nation, Americans have been riveted—and riven—by conspiracy theories. This course introduces students to key methods and questions in U.S. history by exploring conspiratorial episodes from the American Revolution through the present. We’ll pick apart allegations and denials of conspiracies to discover what they tell us about American politics and culture. We’ll also consider historians’ analyses of conspiratorial claims, and think about the relationship between conspiracy and historical causality.

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Luff, Jennifer D
• Room: Gilman 219
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/25
• PosTag(s): HIST-US, POLI-AP, INST-GLOBAL, INST-AP

Since 1900 global markets have undergone a dramatic transformation. This course will grapple with the writings of economists and social theorists who sought to understand the implications of these changes, and in some cases helped to inspire them. Questions they addressed include: does freedom result from the absence of coercion, or does it require the provision of capacities? Do markets reward desirable behaviors, or do they produce social and environmental pathologies? Does competition occur spontaneously, or does it require careful regulation and reinforcement? And what is the relationship between innovation and inequality? Readings include selections from Max Weber, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, W.E.B. DuBois, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, Karl Polanyi, Joseph Schumpeter, Theodor Adorno, Milton Friedman, Donna Haraway, Wendy Brown, and Thomas Piketty. Class meetings will focus on the close reading of these texts, and discussion of how and why perceptions of the market economy have changed over time.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Burgin, Angus
• Room: Gilman 308
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/15
• PosTag(s): HIST-US, HIST-EUROPE, INST-GLOBAL, INST-ECON, CES-ELECT, CES-PD, CES-LC

This seminar-style course will focus on discussing British and American political thought from the "Age of Revolutions", a period also of many critiques of Empire and of many works of Antislavery. Readings include Paine's Common Sense and Rights of Man, the Declaration of Rights, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers; works by Smith, Burke, and Wollstonecraft; and antislavery works by Cugoano, Equiano, Rush, Wesley, and Wilberforce.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Marshall, John W
• Room: Gilman 17
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/19
• PosTag(s): HIST-EUROPE, HIST-US, INST-GLOBAL, INST-PT, CES-LSO

This course begins by reviewing canonical texts in modern political philosophy beginning with Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and ends by exploring classic questions in contemporary debates in race, gender, and identity.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Chaput, Emmanuel
• Room: Krieger 302
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 15/20
• PosTag(s): PHIL-ETHICS, INST-PT, CES-LSO, CES-LC, CES-RI

This course begins by reviewing canonical texts in modern political philosophy beginning with Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and ends by exploring classic questions in contemporary debates in race, gender, and identity.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 1:30PM - 2:20PM
• Instructor: Chaput, Emmanuel
• Room: Krieger 302
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): PHIL-ETHICS, INST-PT, CES-LSO, CES-LC, CES-RI

To understand politics, the sound bites of the modern media take us only so far. In this course, we will take a step back and implement an intellectually rigorous method. Scholars of comparative politics use the method of comparison in order to illuminate important political phenomena of our times. Following this method, we will embark on a scholarly tour of the world and compare the politics of various countries. We will also trace these politics back to their historical sources. We will work from the assumption that there is something to be gained from such comparisons across space and time.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Jabko, Nicolas
• Room: Shaffer 3
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/20
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, AGRI-ELECT, POLI-CP, CES-ELECT

To understand politics, the sound bites of the modern media take us only so far. In this course, we will take a step back and implement an intellectually rigorous method. Scholars of comparative politics use the method of comparison in order to illuminate important political phenomena of our times. Following this method, we will embark on a scholarly tour of the world and compare the politics of various countries. We will also trace these politics back to their historical sources. We will work from the assumption that there is something to be gained from such comparisons across space and time.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Jabko, Nicolas
• Room: Shaffer 3
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/20
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, AGRI-ELECT, POLI-CP, CES-ELECT

To understand politics, the sound bites of the modern media take us only so far. In this course, we will take a step back and implement an intellectually rigorous method. Scholars of comparative politics use the method of comparison in order to illuminate important political phenomena of our times. Following this method, we will embark on a scholarly tour of the world and compare the politics of various countries. We will also trace these politics back to their historical sources. We will work from the assumption that there is something to be gained from such comparisons across space and time.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
• Instructor: Jabko, Nicolas
• Room: Shaffer 3
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/20
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, AGRI-ELECT, POLI-CP, CES-ELECT

To understand politics, the sound bites of the modern media take us only so far. In this course, we will take a step back and implement an intellectually rigorous method. Scholars of comparative politics use the method of comparison in order to illuminate important political phenomena of our times. Following this method, we will embark on a scholarly tour of the world and compare the politics of various countries. We will also trace these politics back to their historical sources. We will work from the assumption that there is something to be gained from such comparisons across space and time.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
• Instructor: Jabko, Nicolas
• Room: Shaffer 3
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/20
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, AGRI-ELECT, POLI-CP, CES-ELECT

To understand politics, the sound bites of the modern media take us only so far. In this course, we will take a step back and implement an intellectually rigorous method. Scholars of comparative politics use the method of comparison in order to illuminate important political phenomena of our times. Following this method, we will embark on a scholarly tour of the world and compare the politics of various countries. We will also trace these politics back to their historical sources. We will work from the assumption that there is something to be gained from such comparisons across space and time.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 9:00AM - 9:50AM
• Instructor: Jabko, Nicolas
• Room: Shaffer 3
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 12/20
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, AGRI-ELECT, POLI-CP, CES-ELECT

To understand politics, the sound bites of the modern media take us only so far. In this course, we will take a step back and implement an intellectually rigorous method. Scholars of comparative politics use the method of comparison in order to illuminate important political phenomena of our times. Following this method, we will embark on a scholarly tour of the world and compare the politics of various countries. We will also trace these politics back to their historical sources. We will work from the assumption that there is something to be gained from such comparisons across space and time.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 9:00AM - 9:50AM
• Instructor: Jabko, Nicolas
• Room: Shaffer 3
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 15/20
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, AGRI-ELECT, POLI-CP, CES-ELECT

To understand politics, the sound bites of the modern media take us only so far. In this course, we will take a step back and implement an intellectually rigorous method. Scholars of comparative politics use the method of comparison in order to illuminate important political phenomena of our times. Following this method, we will embark on a scholarly tour of the world and compare the politics of various countries. We will also trace these politics back to their historical sources. We will work from the assumption that there is something to be gained from such comparisons across space and time.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 1:30PM - 2:20PM
• Instructor: Jabko, Nicolas
• Room: Shaffer 3
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 14/20
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, AGRI-ELECT, POLI-CP, CES-ELECT

To understand politics, the sound bites of the modern media take us only so far. In this course, we will take a step back and implement an intellectually rigorous method. Scholars of comparative politics use the method of comparison in order to illuminate important political phenomena of our times. Following this method, we will embark on a scholarly tour of the world and compare the politics of various countries. We will also trace these politics back to their historical sources. We will work from the assumption that there is something to be gained from such comparisons across space and time.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Jabko, Nicolas
• Room: Shaffer 3
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/20
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, AGRI-ELECT, POLI-CP, CES-ELECT

Global politics involves power: hard and soft power; power over, power with, and power to; resources as power; and relations and processes of power. This course will explore aspects of power as they play out in case studies of diplomacy and war, global markets, and communications networks (cyber and other information technologies). The course will also examine the nature of actors and the powers they have to act across state borders. Readings will include classic texts on power, as well as more recent works of International Relations scholarship, and class assignments will focus on using insights from these works to draw one’s own positions on foreign policy issues.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Marlin-Bennett, Renee E
• Room: Krieger 307
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/20
• PosTag(s): POLI-IR, INST-IR, CES-FT, CES-LSO, CES-TI

This course will explore working people’s political strategies from the Civil War through the present. We'll examine the shifting alliances among trade unions and political parties, and investigate mobilizations by freed people, women, immigrants, and LGBTQ workers. And we’ll pay special attention to the ways that workers’ action shaped the development of the modern American state.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Luff, Jennifer D
• Room: Maryland 114
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/20
• PosTag(s): POLI-AP, INST-AP

For 250 years, American politics and society have reflected tensions between two foundational ideals. On the one hand, the notion of republican citizenship in the Declaration of Independence has inspired notions of the common good and institutions from majoritarian democracy to jury duty and state militias. Meanwhile, the tradition of liberal protections eventually enshrined in the Bill of Rights has grown to guarantee equal treatment and more rights for more people. At times, these two principles have gone hand in hand – at others, they have pointed in two very different directions. In this class, we will explore the philosophical origins of liberalism and republicanism and trace them through historical events and cultural landmarks, from the Revolutionary War until today. In the process, we will study, interpret, and discuss the contentious history of democracy in America.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Schmitz, Volker
• Room: Mergenthaler 252
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/10
• PosTag(s): POLI-PT, INST-PT, CES-ELECT, AGRI-ELECT

The course will cover three topics: 1) The conceptualization of political regime, democracy and authoritarianism. We will also consider neighboring concepts of other macro-political structures—government, state, and administration—in order to be able to demarcate what is distinctive about the study of political regimes. 2) The characterization of political regimes in most Western and some non-Western countries, in history and today. We will centrally focus on the so called “Waves of Democratization,” but we will also consider stories with less happy outcomes, that is, processes that led to the breakdown of democracies and the installation of repressive dictatorships. 3) The explanation(s) of the stability and change of political regimes around the world. Theoretical accounts of regime change come in many flavors—emphasis on economic versus political causes, focus on agents and choices versus structures and constraints, international versus domestic factors, among others. We will consider most of them.

• Days/Times: MWF 3:00PM - 3:50PM
• Instructor: Mazzuca, Sebastian L
• Room: Gilman 77
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/10
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, POLI-CP

The future of Israel has never been more uncertain. Although external threats from Arab countries have abated, the danger posed by a nuclear attack from Iran grows with each passing day. Equally alarming is the growing domestic threat to Israel’s existence as a Jewish democracy. Efforts by Israel’s ruling coalition to weaken the High Court call into question whether the liberal democratic character of Israel can persist. The possibility of civil war, once thought impossible, cannot be discounted. In assessing how Israel can cope with these existential threats, lessons from the destruction of the ancient Israelite kingdoms will be examined.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: David, Steven R
• Room: Mergenthaler 366
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): INST-CP

Business, Finance, and Government in East Asia explores the dynamics of East Asia's economic growth (and crises) over the last fifty years. We will examine Japan's post-war development strategy, the Asian tiger economies, and China's dramatic rise. Centered on case studies of major corporations, this course examines the interplay between politics and economics in East Asia, and considers the following questions: How have businesses navigated East Asia’s complex market environment? In what ways can the state foster economic development? How has the financial system been organized to facilitate investment? What are the long-term prospects for growth in the region?

• Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Yasuda, John Kojiro
• Room: Ames 234
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, INST-ECON, CES-FT, CES-PD

In this course, we will explore a constellation of theories loosely tied together under the rubric ‘violence’. Where and to whom does violence occur? What qualifies as violent, and why? The focus of our attention be both above and below state-to-state wars and international relations. Although war will never be far from our focus, our emphasis will be on those forms of violence that are not reducible to the traditional notion of international conflict. Political theory will help us better understand violence; violence will help us better understand political theory.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Phillips, Chas.
• Room: Krieger 300
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/19
• PosTag(s): POLI-PT, INST-PT, CES-LSO, CES-PD

An analysis of public policy and policy-making for American Cities. Special attention will be given to the subject of urban crime and law enforcement, poverty and welfare, and intergovernmental relations. Cross listed with Africana Studies.

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Spence, Lester
• Room: Hodson 203
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/25
• PosTag(s): INST-AP, CES-LSO, CES-RI, CES-CC

This course examines the domestic, regional, and transnational politics of the Middle East and North Africa. The class is organized into three units. The first examines major armed conflicts— anti-colonial, intra-state, and inter-state—from 1948 through the 1990s. It uses these historical moments as windows onto key issues in Middle Eastern and North African political issues such as external intervention/occupation, human rights, sectarianism, social movements, and memory politics. Unit Two focuses on policy relevant issues such as democratization, minority populations, religion and politics, and gender. In Unit Three, students will explore the politics of the Arab Uprisings through critical reading and discussion of new (post-2011) scholarship on MENA states, organizations, and populations. Enrollment limited to Political Science and International Studies majors.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Parkinson, Sarah
• Room: Krieger 300
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/25
• PosTag(s): ISLM-ISLMST, INST-CP, INST-GLOBAL

This advanced level course is intended to help students understand the frontiers of empirical political science research – that is, research concerned with answering causal questions – as presented in recent books by (for the most part) junior scholars. The books represent the substantive and methodological pluralism of our field, with books coming from American, Comparative, IR, and Political Economy. We will give two weeks’ treatment to most books on the syllabus, spending the first week reading “motivating” or classic material that inspired the book project, as well a companion of a key methodological text that inspired the research design. Along with reading the materials that help to situate the book in larger debates in its subfield we will read the first several chapters of the book. In the second week of discussion we will read the second half of the book – the evidence chapters and the conclusion – and focus on understanding whether and how the evidence that is presented matches with the theoretical and empirical claims made in the book’s beginnings.

• Days/Times: M 3:00PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Teele, Dawn Langan
• Room: Wyman Park N325F
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/8
• PosTag(s): POLI-CP, AGRI-ELECT

This seminar explores how the New Deal, the fundamental moment in the post-Civil War United States, has structured politics and government across a variety of domains ever since. Topics include presidential leadership, executive power, political parties, labor, race, and the welfare state.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Schlozman, Daniel
• Room: Latrobe 120
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/15
• PosTag(s): INST-AP, CES-PD, CES-LC

This upper-level seminar examines some of the major debates and issues of postwar Japanese and South Korean political economy. Topics include nationalism, gender politics, civil society, immigration, and US-Japan-South Korea trilateral relations.

• Days/Times: T 3:00PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Chung, Erin
• Room: Shaffer 303
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/15
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, CES-PD

Although “the market” is conventionally understood as separate from “politics”, the modern market economy did not arise in a political vacuum. In fact, the very separation between the economy and politics is itself the product of a politically potent set of ideas. This course is an upper-division reading seminar on the origins and evolution of the modern market economy. Readings will include Smith, Marx, Weber, Polanyi, Keynes, Hayek, Friedman, Becker, and Foucault. Recommended course background: Introduction to comparative politics OR any college-level course in social or political theory.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Jabko, Nicolas
• Room: Mergenthaler 431
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/15
• PosTag(s): INST-ECON, CES-FT, CES-PD

Despite its well-known idiosyncrasies, the American state has consistently wielded substantial power, and many Americans have long experienced the state’s power as potent, omnipresent, and structuring their lives in important ways. This research-based course will examine theories of the state and political authority both from “above” - considering the political sources of both the American state’s power and its limitations - and from “below,” using people’s own narratives and political formations to explore how Americans develop knowledge about the state, confront and resist the state’s power, and expand or shift its distribution of ‘public’ goods. How do people understand the state, theorize its operations and possibilities, deploy it, and sometimes build parallel structures of provision and governance? We explore several cases of when people marginalized by race, class, gender, or precarious legal standing organized deep challenges to state power and transformed state authority. Considering the state as both formal structure and frame for everyday experience can offer a fresh perspective on contemporary democratic challenges and political struggles. Students will conduct original research using archives and sources like the American Prison Writing Archive, oral history archives like the Ralph Bunche collection and HistoryMakers collection, and archival sources in the History Vault such as the Kerner Commission interviews. The course is appropriate for advanced undergraduates (juniors and seniors), preferably having taken courses in political science or related coursework, and graduate students in political science, history, and sociology.

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Lieberman, Robert C; Weaver, Vesla Mae
• Room: Shriver Hall 104
• Status: Reserved Open
• Seats Available: 9/18
• PosTag(s): POLI-IR, INST-AP

The focus of the seminar is on the formation and transformation sates and regimes. The perspective is both historical and comparative, covering Western Europe, Latin America, Africa and the US as a “non exceptional” case. This is fundamentally a Comparative Politics course, but APD students will almost certainly benefit from it.

• Days/Times: Th 9:30AM - 11:30AM
• Instructor: Mazzuca, Sebastian L
• Room: Mergenthaler 366
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, INST-IR, CES-LSO, CES-PD

The philosophy of law or jurisprudence investigates the nature of law and what makes law, as it were, law. This course will examine some of the ways in which law has been defined and understood. It will also consider how law is distinguished from other systems of norms and values, such as morality, and how law is distinguished from other aspects of government, such as politics. In addition, the course will introduce students to discussions of legal reasoning and interpretation. To complete the course, students will be required to participate in class discussion, take two exams, and write a paper.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Culbert, Jennifer
• Room: Bloomberg 276
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/19
• PosTag(s): INST-PT, CES-LSO

This seminar explores the intellectual origins and ongoing intellectual productivity of the historical materialist account of political economy inaugurated with Karl Marx. It considers, in particular, how fatal couplings between power and difference are leveraged by capitalism as a tool of accumulation. Women’s labor and social reproduction, nature’s availability for mastery and the destructive exploitation of land and natural resources, racial inferiority and exploitative conditions of labor, and Global South peoples conscription into hyper-exploitative labor. The seminar will explore and interrogate the political dimensions of these transformations: how are relationships of political rule entangled with capitalist priorities of accumulation and which peoples/political subjects get to do the ruling and why? How did patriarchal and racial arrangements came to be, how do they relate to the production of value, and how are they sustained politically today? How do historical political transformations (including formal decolonization, democratic transitions, and the onset of free trade and structural adjustment, among others) inaugurate new forms of accumulation and how do these forms and their politics take different shape in the North and the Global South? A sample of the readings include Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, W. E. B. Du Bois, Silvia Federici, Andreas Malm, Ruy Mauro Marini, and others.

• Days/Times: T 9:00AM - 11:30AM
• Instructor: Valdez, Inés
• Room: Macaulay 101
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/5
• PosTag(s): INST-PT, INST-ECON, CES-PD, CES-RI

There is a widespread recognition that the prospects for contemporary civilization and humanity are shadowed by a range of catastrophic and existential threats, a major subset of which are anthropogenic and technogenic in character. (In the simplest terms these threats arise from the collision between scientific-technological modernity and the geography of the planet Earth.) At the same time, the two most powerful institutional complexes on the planet (market capitalism and the war state system) are committed to further rapidly advancing technology for power and plenty, and anticipate further great elevations of the human estate. Over the last long century, a great debate has emerged, across many disciplines, on the ‘terrapolitan question’(TQ): given the new and prospective material contexts for human agency, what world orders are needed to assure human survival, prosperity and freedom? Practical agency responsive to the new horizon of threat and benefit depends upon getting an adequate answer to this question. Any theory capable of illuminating these realities and choices, and answering the TQ, must be significantly materialist in character. Explicitly materialist theories are very old, and very diverse, and material factors appear in virtually every body of thought, yet are still significantly underdeveloped in contemporary international and world order theory.

• Days/Times: W 4:30PM - 7:00PM
• Instructor: Deudney, Daniel Horace
• Room: Mergenthaler 366
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/5
• PosTag(s): POLI-IR, INST-IR, CES-LE, CES-PD

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Brendese, PJ Joseph
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: David, Steven R
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Marlin-Bennett, Renee E
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Zackin, Emily
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Freedman, Robert
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Shilliam, Robbie
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Chung, Erin
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Culbert, Jennifer
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Ginsberg, Benjamin
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Sheingate, Adam
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Simon, Josh David
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Han, Hahrie
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Barkawi, Tarak Karim
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Phillips, Chas.
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Teles, Steven Michael
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Lieberman, Robert C
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Seniors also have the opportunity to write a senior research thesis. To be eligible to write this thesis, students must identify a faculty sponsor who will supervise the project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Deluca, Stefanie
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Blues and jazz are rarely understood as mediums for political thought and action. Popular culture has always been an avenue for Black Americans to express their interests and influence American politics broadly, and yet few political scientists take interest in the political salience of the blues. This course will examine how the blues and its extension into jazz critique and explain conditions of racial domination in the plantation South and new relations of domination in the urban sphere. Students will explore these ideas using archival objects, African American literature, blues and jazz listening, and the works of artists and analysts such as Langston Hughes, W. E. B Du Bois, Bessie Smith, Eubie Blake, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Muddy Waters, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Harold Cruse, Amiri Baraka, Clyde Woods, Richard Iton, Daphne Duval Harrison, and Angela Y. Davis.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Gaines, Kory
• Room: Krieger 308
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course explores the imbrication of nuclear weapons and colonialism in global politics. Each stage of nuclear weapons production mobilizes existing colonial relations or creates new sites of coloniality: uranium mining in African colonies, nuclear fuel industries that polluted native lands, and nuclear testing in occupied Pacific Islands. A critical understanding of nuclear politics thus requires a decolonial lens to examine the role of colonial relations, the impact of nuclear industries on marginalized communities, and instances of resistance that envision a nuclear-free and anticolonial future. Towards this goal, the course addresses a series of questions, including: How are nuclear weapons produced, by and for whom? Are nuclear weapons only instruments at the hands of world leaders, or are they already part of everyday realities for historically and currently colonized communities? Can ‘national security’ and ‘strategic calculations’ justify nuclear use and the legacies of nuclear violence? What are instances of resistance that tie together anti-colonial and antinuclear determinations?

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Li, Ruoyu
• Room: Gilman 377
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): POLI-IR, INST-IR, CES-ELECT

Is freedom possible within the complex conditions of modern civilization? We examine this problem through a study of how it was addressed in the rational humanist tradition (Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx). Emphasis will be placed on how members of this tradition conceptualized freedom, how they theorized the nature of modern society, and what they took to be necessary to overcome modern alienation so as to achieve a world of actualized freedom. Utilizing the dialectical methods of intellectual history, we endeavor to learn from, critically evaluate, and discern the political effects of their theoretical innovations and ideological visions. Important top-ics covered will include democracy, liberalism, collectivism, the dialectic, ideology, capitalism, the nation-state, crisis theo-ry, class struggle, exploitation, revolution, and communism. We will explore these topics through close readings of origi-nal texts and systematic argumentation about their real-world implications. Students should expect to come away from the course with a heightened capacity for interpreting the history of ideas and theorizing about the institutional dynamics, ob-jective pathologies, and imaginable possibilities of our infinite-ly complex civilization. Previous coursework in political theory, intellectual history, or philosophy is recommended.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Roundtree, Jacob
• Room: Bloomberg 178
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 10/13
• PosTag(s): POLI-PT, CES-ELECT

East Asia’s “miracle growth” has not gone hand in hand with a decisive move toward democracy. Over the last 30 years, only eight East Asian countries have become democratic out of more than 60 countries worldwide, and they continue to struggle with the challenges of democratic consolidation, weak political governance, and limited citizens’ political engagement. This course explores the reasons why democratization proceeds slowly in East Asia, and seems to be essentially decoupled from the region’s fast-paced economic growth. The choice of Korea, Indonesia, and Myanmar as the case studies for this course results from their authoritarian past as well as their more recent institutional and political trajectories towards democracy.

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Dore, Giovanna Maria Dora
• Room: Mergenthaler 266
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/15
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, INST-ECON, CES-PD

This course will explore the dynamics and interplay between social entrepreneurship, social change, and policy. Students will explore this specific moment in our democracy, and contextualize erosion happening in international and domestic contexts. The course will examine the intersection between social change and policy change, examining how the two concepts intersect while focusing on the end goal of systems change and furthering democracy. Students will examine different case studies of social transformation (or proposed social transformation) from across the United States and world. Guest speakers will include diverse practitioners of social entrepreneurship who think about long-term pathways to transformative social change, and dynamic policymakers. While the course will include case studies on broader domestic and international challenges and models of democratic erosion, a larger focus will be on specific local social problems and solutions. This will manifest through class discussions and a final project based on the surrounding community.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Warren, Scott L
• Room: Gilman 377
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 19/24
• PosTag(s): AGRI-ELECT, CES-CC

That the nations of the world could ever work together seems utopian, but also unavoidable: migration, war, and not least climate change make some form of global coordination increasingly necessary. This course will give historical and philosophical depth to the idea of a cosmopolitan order and world peace by tracing it from its ancient sources through early modernity to today. At the center of the course will be the text that has been credited with founding the tradition of a world federation of nations, Immanuel Kant’s "Toward Perpetual Peace" (1795). Confronting recent and current political discourse, literature, and philosophy with Kant’s famous treatise, we will work to gain a new perspective on the idea of a world order. In addition to Kant, readings include Homer, Erasmus, Pico della Mirandola, Rousseau, Jeremy Bentham, Emily Dickinson, Tolstoy, Whitman, Rosa Luxemburg, Gandhi, Hannah Arendt, John Lennon, and Martin Luther King as well as lesser-known authors such as the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Ellen Key, Odette Thibault, Simone Weil, and Claude Lefort. Taught in English.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Frey, Christiane; Seguin, Becquer D
• Room: Gilman 381
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): INST-PT, CES-LSO

Can there be a life/politics without love and care? What does the study of politics look like if we center love and care in our research inquiry? When COVID-19 wreaked havoc globally, the conversation around love and care in their life-sustaining forms became central. Lockdowns reaffirmed private, heteronormative, and capitalist homes as a place of safety and stability. At the same time, it simultaneously concealed various co-habitation practices, feelings of loneliness due to isolation, as well as pervasive gendered-based domestic violence. However, COVID-19 is not a moment of exception, but of an emergency in which the maintenance of life became paramount for all of us. This class focuses on life-sustaining and deeply political characteristics of love and care in the age of ever-impending crises from earthquakes to wildfires, floods to pandemics within academia and beyond. To do so, the first week of the class (re)conceptualizes love and care by predominantly drawing on feminist political thought. As such, the course aims to facilitate a collective discussion for the participants to analyze moral and political foundations of love and care by reflecting on readings and their everyday experiences. The second half of the class brings forth political science research that centers love and care as integral in analyzing political phenomena instead of the dominant focus on death, destruction, institutions, diplomacy, and so on. As such, the course creates a space to re-think how love and care can improve the political science inquiry.

• Days/Times: W 4:30PM - 7:00PM
• Instructor: Bakan, Ronay
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

Washington, DC, is the capital of the United States but also the capital of its post–World War II national security state and military-industrial complex. This course will investigate the local effects of this status on the Washington-Baltimore corridor, in terms of immigration and urban development. The course will be divided into three major sections. First, we will analyze the growth and development of the military-industrial complex. Second, we will look at its place in the city and region’s development, including the construction of the Pentagon, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and other institutions. Third, we will analyze how these institutions have driven changes in the region’s population, as immigrants from war-torn parts of the globe have found new homes in and near Washington, DC. This course requires at least four Friday group trips to 555 Penn in Washington, which will take most of the day (transportation provided).

• Days/Times: F 10:00AM - 12:30PM
• Instructor: Schrader, Stuart Laurence
• Room: Mergenthaler 266
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/18
• PosTag(s): INST-AP, CES-CC, CES-PD, CES-LSO, CES-BM

This course provides an introduction to Western political theory, focusing on theories and practices of power and authority. We will examine the extent to which it is possible to describe, theorize, and make visible how political power operates, and power's relationship to authority, knowledge, truth, and political freedom. A strong tradition of political thought argues that people's consent is what makes political power legitimate. But what if one of the most insidious workings of power is its ability to prevent us from telling the difference between consent and coercion? Can power allow certain authorities to effectively brainwash people? If so, does that mean that those who obey authority should no longer be held politically responsible for their actions? Does the coercive power of norms and conformity prevent any robust practice of freedom? What role (if any) should state power play in negotiating questions of morality, religion and sexuality? Lastly, we will be haunted by a related question: can political theories of power make people free, or are those theories implicated in the very coercion they profess to oppose? Classes will be a combination of lectures, critical discussions/debates, film screenings and presentations. Throughout the term, you will sharpen your ability to formulate coherent written and spoken arguments by organizing and supporting your thoughts in a persuasive manner. An important part of this skill will include the ability to wrestle with complex and controversial political problems that lack any single answer. The stakes of these problems will be brought to life by the political examples we will study, and made legible by looking through the theoretical lenses of diverse thinkers.

• Days/Times: MTW 1:00PM - 3:20PM
• Instructor: Brendese, PJ Joseph
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 11/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course examines the politics and policies that shape the production and consumption of food. Topics include food security, obesity, crop and animal production, and the impacts of agriculture on climate change. We will also consider the vulnerabilities of our food system to challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as efforts to transform food and agriculture through new food technologies and grass-roots movements to create a more democratic food system.

• Days/Times: MWTh 1:00PM - 3:30PM
• Instructor: Sheingate, Adam
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 13/18
• PosTag(s): n/a

What is “the common good”? How do individuals consider this idea, this question, and how are societies led, or misled, by its pursuit? Together, we will explore sources from a range of perspectives: What does Aristotle’s theory of the common good teach us? Or the Federalist Papers, the design of Baltimore’s public transportation system, meritocracy in higher education, the perniciousness of pandemics, proliferation of nuclear weapons, restorative justice, or intimate love? Drawing from film, journal articles, literature, and other sources—authors/creators include Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Bong Joon-ho, Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Sandel, and more—this First-Year Seminar is as much about how we ask and interrogate challenging, timeless questions as it is about the answers themselves. Engaging our material and each other, we will work together to hone the habits of scholarly inquiry essential to this practice: reading, writing, talking. The seminar will culminate in a final, collaborative research project that seeks to map, and manifest, versions of the common good.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Watters, Aliza
• Room: Greenhouse 113
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

Freedom of speech, and the related freedom of the press, are core values for democracies -- and for universities, in which the freedom to challenge accepted beliefs is assumed to be essential to advancing knowledge. The 1st Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and of the press, as do the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the European Convention on Human Rights among other statements. But like other rights, my right to freedom of speech may conflict with yours, or it may infringe on other important rights or societal objectives. As a result, freedom of speech cannot be (and in practice is not) unlimited. In this seminar, we will be asking why freedom of speech has been accorded such importance, and how and why it might legitimately be limited, in politics, in business, in everyday life, and in universities, looking both at the United States and at other liberal democracies. Reading will include opinions (both majority and dissenting) of courts in the United States, Canada, and Europe, with discussion informed by Justice Robert Jackson’s quip about the US Supreme Court (but equally applicable to other top-level courts): “We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.”

• Days/Times: MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Katz, Richard Stephen
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

"What don’t we do with words? Even silence makes manifest the power of speech. This course will introduce you to some of the ways that power has been described and thought about. In addition to studying arguments that connect the power of speech to what it means to be human, we will explore various attempts both to protect and limit speech, taking into consideration not only how we do things with words but how words affect us. Topics that will be covered include freedom of speech, censorship, hate speech, talking back, silence, and storytelling. We will read texts in philosophy, political science, law, and literature, and we will watch at least one film or play. While we discuss the power of speech, we will also reflect on the ways in which discussion fosters a community. In other words, the experience of our discussion is a topic for our conversation. First-year seminars are designed to encourage “meaningful civil exchange among students across disciplinary interests and backgrounds” as well as to “foster early, sustained faculty-student interaction and mentorship.” We will talk about how such seminars are supposed to work and how they may (or may not) realize their goals. Reading, analyzing, and discussing the texts assigned in this course will help us develop foundational critical thinking skills; how might these activities also establish a sense of (group) identity?

• Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Culbert, Jennifer
• Room: Jenkins 107
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

This First-Year Seminar is designed for students of all backgrounds to provide a mathematical introduction to social choice theory, weighted voting systems, apportionment methods, and gerrymandering. In the search for ideal ways to make certain kinds of political decisions, a lot of wasted effort could be averted if mathematics could determine that finding such an ideal were actually possible in the first place. The seminar will analyze data from recent US elections as well as provide historical context to modern discussions in politics, culminating in a mathematical analysis of the US Electoral College. Case studies, future implications, and comparisons to other governing bodies outside the US will be used to apply the theory of the course. Students will use Microsoft Excel to analyze data sets. There are no mathematical prerequisites for this course.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Cutrone, Joseph W
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): AGRI-ELECT

In a moment in time in which our very democracy at risk, this First-Year Seminar will investigate why democratic erosion is occurring, its ramifications, and how to address it. Led by Scott Warren, the co-founder and former CEO of Generation Citizen, a national civics education organization, and a current Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute, this seminar will be heavily discussion-based, relate to current events, and will explore the dynamics and interplay between the realities of democracy in the US and around the world, social entrepreneurship, social change, and policy. This course aims to introduce students to some of the most important issues and debates surrounding democratic consolidation and erosion around the world. Students will study different case studies of democratic erosion and social transformation (or proposed social transformation) from across the United States and world. We will also explore how movements across the world in response to authoritarianism and anti-democratic sentiment are driving the themes explored in the course.

• Days/Times: M 12:00PM - 2:30PM
• Instructor: Warren, Scott L
• Room: Greenhouse 113
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): AGRI-ELECT

What does it mean to translate? Is a translation merely a transposition of a text or speech from one language to another, or does it entail more? Can the act of translating happen between different genres? What does critical reading entail? In this class we will use the well-known myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to answer these and other questions by analyzing different versions of the myth that span across time, space, language, genre, and media. We will not just learn about translation broadly defined, but also about the metaphor of translation as a transition or a crossing between (or a-cross) multiple entities. Much like Orpheus, we will embark upon a journey of discovery full of forks and twists in the road, only to discover that what Orpheus was searching for might not be as far removed from contemporary questions of identity, self, and our place in the world.

• Days/Times: MW 4:30PM - 5:45PM
• Instructor: Avesani, Tatiana
• Room: Gilman 108
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 16/18
• PosTag(s): n/a

Presidential elections – even rare, unexpected, or paradigm-busting elections – do not occur in a vacuum. Instead, they are created, shaped, and constructed by a variety of significant forces, over time. This seminar thus suggests that you cannot understand modern presidential politics and contests, including the 2020 election and the upcoming 2024 election, without examining the historical antecedents that make the present-day moment possible. Consequently, while enrolled in this seminar, students will grapple with the following central question: what are the foundational moments in modern American social, political, and economic history that provided the “building blocks” for the 2024 United States Presidential Election? How can we use history to analyze and explain the developments of the 2024 election, as those moments are happening in real time?

• Days/Times: W 11:30AM - 2:00PM
• Instructor: Connolly, Nathan D; Wright Rigueur, Leah M
• Room: 555 Penn 740
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 3/15
• PosTag(s): INST-AP, HIST-US, AGRI-ELECT, CES-LSO

This course surveys scholarly approaches to processes, relations, institutions, and social structures that cross, subvert, or transcend national borders. The course will also introduce students to research tools for global studies. Students who have taken Contemporary International Politics 190.209 or International Politics 190.104 may not register.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM
• Instructor: Marlin-Bennett, Renee E
• Room: Gilman 50
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/20
• PosTag(s): INST-GATEWY, INST-IR, POLI-IR, CES-BM

This course surveys scholarly approaches to processes, relations, institutions, and social structures that cross, subvert, or transcend national borders. The course will also introduce students to research tools for global studies. Students who have taken Contemporary International Politics 190.209 or International Politics 190.104 may not register.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM
• Instructor: Marlin-Bennett, Renee E
• Room: Gilman 50
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/20
• PosTag(s): INST-GATEWY, INST-IR, POLI-IR, CES-BM

This course surveys scholarly approaches to processes, relations, institutions, and social structures that cross, subvert, or transcend national borders. The course will also introduce students to research tools for global studies. Students who have taken Contemporary International Politics 190.209 or International Politics 190.104 may not register.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
• Instructor: Marlin-Bennett, Renee E
• Room: Gilman 50
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/20
• PosTag(s): INST-GATEWY, INST-IR, POLI-IR, CES-BM

This course surveys scholarly approaches to processes, relations, institutions, and social structures that cross, subvert, or transcend national borders. The course will also introduce students to research tools for global studies. Students who have taken Contemporary International Politics 190.209 or International Politics 190.104 may not register.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
• Instructor: Marlin-Bennett, Renee E
• Room: Gilman 50
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/20
• PosTag(s): INST-GATEWY, INST-IR, POLI-IR, CES-BM

This course surveys scholarly approaches to processes, relations, institutions, and social structures that cross, subvert, or transcend national borders. The course will also introduce students to research tools for global studies. Students who have taken Contemporary International Politics 190.209 or International Politics 190.104 may not register.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Marlin-Bennett, Renee E
• Room: Gilman 50
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/20
• PosTag(s): INST-GATEWY, INST-IR, POLI-IR, CES-BM

This course surveys scholarly approaches to processes, relations, institutions, and social structures that cross, subvert, or transcend national borders. The course will also introduce students to research tools for global studies. Students who have taken Contemporary International Politics 190.209 or International Politics 190.104 may not register.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Marlin-Bennett, Renee E
• Room: Gilman 50
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/20
• PosTag(s): INST-GATEWY, INST-IR, POLI-IR, CES-BM

An introductory overview of Western Political Theory, starting with Plato and the Greeks, moving through Machiavelli and the moderns, and ending up with a brief look at current political theory. We will analyze a range of theoretical styles and political approaches from a handful of thinkers, and develop our skills as close readers, efficient writers, and persuasive speakers.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Phillips, Chas.
• Room: Hodson 303
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/19
• PosTag(s): INST-PT, POLI-PT, CES-ELECT

This course provides an analysis of US foreign policy with a focus on the interests, institutions, and ideas underpinning its development. It offers a broad historical survey that starts with US involvement in the First World War, covers major developments of the twentieth century, and concludes with contemporary issues. Important themes include the developments underpinning the emergence of the liberal world order, strategies of containment during the Cold War, nuclear deterrence and antiproliferation efforts, the politics of international trade, alliance politics, technological and security policy, and the re-emergence of great power competition.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Schmidt, Sebastian
• Room: Krieger 205
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/20
• PosTag(s): INST-AP, INST-IR, CES-LSO, CES-FT

This course provides an analysis of US foreign policy with a focus on the interests, institutions, and ideas underpinning its development. It offers a broad historical survey that starts with US involvement in the First World War, covers major developments of the twentieth century, and concludes with contemporary issues. Important themes include the developments underpinning the emergence of the liberal world order, strategies of containment during the Cold War, nuclear deterrence and antiproliferation efforts, the politics of international trade, alliance politics, technological and security policy, and the re-emergence of great power competition.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Schmidt, Sebastian
• Room: Krieger 205
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/20
• PosTag(s): INST-AP, INST-IR, CES-LSO, CES-FT

This course provides an analysis of US foreign policy with a focus on the interests, institutions, and ideas underpinning its development. It offers a broad historical survey that starts with US involvement in the First World War, covers major developments of the twentieth century, and concludes with contemporary issues. Important themes include the developments underpinning the emergence of the liberal world order, strategies of containment during the Cold War, nuclear deterrence and antiproliferation efforts, the politics of international trade, alliance politics, technological and security policy, and the re-emergence of great power competition.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
• Instructor: Schmidt, Sebastian
• Room: Krieger 205
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/20
• PosTag(s): INST-AP, INST-IR, CES-LSO, CES-FT

This course provides an analysis of US foreign policy with a focus on the interests, institutions, and ideas underpinning its development. It offers a broad historical survey that starts with US involvement in the First World War, covers major developments of the twentieth century, and concludes with contemporary issues. Important themes include the developments underpinning the emergence of the liberal world order, strategies of containment during the Cold War, nuclear deterrence and antiproliferation efforts, the politics of international trade, alliance politics, technological and security policy, and the re-emergence of great power competition.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
• Instructor: Schmidt, Sebastian
• Room: Krieger 205
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/20
• PosTag(s): INST-AP, INST-IR, CES-LSO, CES-FT

This course provides an analysis of US foreign policy with a focus on the interests, institutions, and ideas underpinning its development. It offers a broad historical survey that starts with US involvement in the First World War, covers major developments of the twentieth century, and concludes with contemporary issues. Important themes include the developments underpinning the emergence of the liberal world order, strategies of containment during the Cold War, nuclear deterrence and antiproliferation efforts, the politics of international trade, alliance politics, technological and security policy, and the re-emergence of great power competition.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 9:00AM - 9:50AM
• Instructor: Schmidt, Sebastian
• Room: Krieger 205
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/16
• PosTag(s): INST-AP, INST-IR, CES-LSO, CES-FT

Over the past several decades, the power and importance of America’s presidency have greatly expanded . Of course, presidential history includes both ups and downs, some coinciding with the rise and fall of national party systems and others linked to specific problems, issues, and personalities. We should train our analytic eyes, however, to see beneath the surface of day-to-day and even decade-to-decade political turbulence. We should focus, instead, on the pronounced secular trend of more than two and a quarter centuries of American history. Two hundred years ago, presidents were weak and often bullied by Congress. Today, presidents are powerful and often thumb their noses at Congress and the courts. For better or worse, we have entered a presidentialist era.

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Ginsberg, Benjamin
• Room: Krieger 308
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): POLI-AP, INST-AP

Introduces fundamental patterns, puzzles, and theories on the politics of income inequality.

• Days/Times: WF 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Rehm, Philipp
• Room: Hodson 203
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/16
• PosTag(s): INST-ECON, CES-LC, CES-RI, CES-GI

This course provides an introduction to climate solutions by reviewing the politics and technologies in all major sectors: electricity, transportation, biofuels, hydrogen, buildings, heavy industry, and agriculture. In each area, we will first understand the existing technologies and potential solutions. But to understand decarbonization, we also have to study the political economy of these technologies. What role do the technologies play in the broader economy? Who will win or lose from the transition? What firms and countries dominate and control current and emerging supply chains? What makes a climate solutions project bankable? How can states design policies, regulations, and programs to successfully manage the politics of technology change?

• Days/Times: MW 9:00AM - 9:50AM, F 9:00AM - 9:50AM
• Instructor: Allan, Bentley
• Room: Gilman 50
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/20
• PosTag(s): INST-IR, INST-ECON, ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR, ENGY-SCIPOL, CES-LE, CES-TI

This course provides an introduction to climate solutions by reviewing the politics and technologies in all major sectors: electricity, transportation, biofuels, hydrogen, buildings, heavy industry, and agriculture. In each area, we will first understand the existing technologies and potential solutions. But to understand decarbonization, we also have to study the political economy of these technologies. What role do the technologies play in the broader economy? Who will win or lose from the transition? What firms and countries dominate and control current and emerging supply chains? What makes a climate solutions project bankable? How can states design policies, regulations, and programs to successfully manage the politics of technology change?

• Days/Times: MW 9:00AM - 9:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM
• Instructor: Allan, Bentley
• Room: Gilman 50
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 8/20
• PosTag(s): INST-IR, INST-ECON, ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR, ENGY-SCIPOL, CES-LE, CES-TI

An introduction to the fundamental questions and concepts of political economy: money, commodities, profit, and capital. The course will study the nature of economic forces and relations as elements larger social and political orders.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Chambers, Samuel Allen
• Room: Shaffer 301
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 3/20
• PosTag(s): INST-ECON, INST-PT, CES-ELECT

An introduction to the fundamental questions and concepts of political economy: money, commodities, profit, and capital. The course will study the nature of economic forces and relations as elements larger social and political orders.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Chambers, Samuel Allen
• Room: Shaffer 301
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 9/20
• PosTag(s): INST-ECON, INST-PT, CES-ELECT

An introduction to the fundamental questions and concepts of political economy: money, commodities, profit, and capital. The course will study the nature of economic forces and relations as elements larger social and political orders.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
• Instructor: Chambers, Samuel Allen
• Room: Shaffer 301
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 13/20
• PosTag(s): INST-ECON, INST-PT, CES-ELECT

Recommended Course Background: AS.190.214

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Spence, Lester
• Room: Shaffer 202
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/20
• PosTag(s): INST-AP, CES-RI

“Can the United States and China avoid a new Cold War? One might think not given disputes over the South China Sea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, human rights, trade, ideology and so much more. Moreover, competition for influence in the developing world and American concerns as to whether China will replace it as the preeminent world power suggest a new Cold War is in the offing. Nevertheless, their extensive economic ties and need to work together to solve common problems such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, and pandemics argues against a continuing confrontation. This course will examine whether cooperation or conflict will define Sino-American relations, and whether a new Cold War—or even a shooting war—lies in the future.”

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: David, Steven R
• Room: Mergenthaler 366
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): INST-IR

This class explores the ideas and legal doctrines that define the freedom of speech. We will examine the free speech jurisprudence of the U.S. in comparison to that of other systems, particularly the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the Supreme Court of Canada.

• Days/Times: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Katz, Richard Stephen; Zackin, Emily
• Room: Gilman 377
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): INST-AP, INST-CP, CES-LSO, AGRI-ELECT

Nationalism ties powerful organizations to political mobilization, territory, and individual loyalty. Yet nationalism is typically studied in isolation from other social formations that depend upon organizational – individual linkages. Alternative types of identity category sometimes depend similarly upon organizations that collect and deploy resources, mobilize individuals, erect boundaries, and promote strong emotional connections among individuals as well as between individuals and institutions. In this class, we study classic and contemporary works on nationalism, drawn from multiple disciplinary and analytic traditions, in the comparative context of alternative forms of identity. The focus of the class will be primarily theoretical, with no regional or temporal limitations.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Kocher, Matthew Adam
• Room: Bloomberg 168
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/18
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, INST-PT, CES-BM, CES-RI

This is a writing intensive, advanced undergraduate political theory seminar. The course will examine the politics of memory: how power shapes what is available to be remembered, the timing and occasions of memory, who is allowed to remember, and the spaces inside of which remembrance takes place. Specifically, the seminar will explore how segregated memory enables racial segregation and racial inequality. Toward that end, we shall investigate political and theoretical interventions potentially equipped to contest contemporary forms of racial amnesia haunting what some have labeled a “post-truth” world.

• Days/Times: W 3:00PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Brendese, PJ Joseph
• Room: Gilman 277
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/15
• PosTag(s): INST-PT, CES-RI

This course introduces students of politics to international law. We will explore historical roots and current problems, recognizing along the way persistent contestation over the participants, sources, purposes, and interests associated with international law. The course situates formal aspects of law—centered on international treaties, international organizations, the World Court (ICJ), and the International Criminal Court (ICC)—within a broader field of global governance consisting of treaty-based and customary law, states and transnational actors, centralized and decentralized forms of legal authority. We will place special emphasis on the significance of international law to colonialism, decolonization, and contemporary forms of imperialism, keeping in mind that the law has been experienced differently in the Global South and by actors not recognized as sovereign by states in positions of power. Students will be exposed to a range of approaches, including rational choice, various species of legalism, process-oriented theories, critical legal studies, and postcolonial critiques.

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Ross, Andrew
• Room: Gilman 17
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/19
• PosTag(s): POLI-IR, INST-IR, CES-LSO

This course examines the politics of food at the local, national, and global level. Topics include the politics of agricultural subsidies, struggles over genetically modified foods, government efforts at improving food safety, and issues surrounding obesity and nutrition policy. Juniors, seniors, and graduate students only. Cross-listed with Public Health Studies. A student who takes AS.190.223 (Understanding the Food System) in Summer 2021 cannot also enroll in this course.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Sheingate, Adam
• Room: Krieger 307
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/19
• PosTag(s): ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR, CES-LE, CES-BM, CES-CC

A close reading of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Ethics by Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), with consideration of important commentaries on these works. What conceptions of the human being, nature, reason, God, and freedom are defended and affirmed by Hobbes and Spinoza? What rhetorical strategies accompany their theories of self, ethics, social life?

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Bennett, Jane; Culbert, Jennifer
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/15
• PosTag(s): INST-PT

This seminar will address the role of violence–both domestic and international–in political life. Though most claim to abhor violence, since the advent of recorded history, violence and politics have been intimately related. States practice violence against internal and external foes. Political dissidents engage in violence against states. Competing political forces inflict violence upon one another. Writing in 1924, Winston Churchill declared–and not without reason–that, "The story of the human race is war." Indeed, violence and the threat of violence are the most potent forces in political life. It is, to be sure, often averred that problems can never truly be solved by the use of force. Violence, the saying goes, is not the answer. This adage certainly appeals to our moral sensibilities. But whether or not violence is the answer presumably depends upon the question being asked. For better or worse, it is violence that usually provides the most definitive answers to three of the major questions of political life--statehood, territoriality and power. Violent struggle, in the form of war, revolution, civil war, terrorism and the like, more than any other immediate factor, determines what states will exist and their relative power, what territories they will occupy, and which groups will and will not exercise power within them. Course is open to juniors and seniors.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Ginsberg, Benjamin
• Room: Croft Hall G02
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): INST-IR, CES-LSO

Europe has been in a sense the first testing ground for theories of comparative politics, but many outsiders now see Europe as a pacified and somewhat boring place. This course will question conventional wisdom through an examination of European politics in historical and cross-national perspective. We will apply the comparative method to the study of European politics today, and conversely we will ask what Europe tells us more generally about politics. We will see that Europe is still a locus of intense conflict as well as remarkably diverse experimentation. Topics will include: political, legal, and economic governance; the evolution of democracy and fundamental rights, the welfare state, class stratification, immigration and race, the role of religion; European integration and globalization. Recommended background: Introduction to Comparative Politics.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Jabko, Nicolas
• Room: Maryland 309
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/15
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, CES-ELECT

This course offers a graduate-level introduction to the field of comparative politics, focusing on the substantive questions that drive contemporary research. Issues will include: state formation and state capacity; regime typology, democratization, and democratic backsliding; party systems and political behavior; political economy and economic development; racial, ethnic, and religious politics; and revolutions and political violence. Readings include both classic and recent works, selected to help students both prepare for major or minor comprehensive exams and frame their own research projects.

• Days/Times: Th 2:00PM - 4:30PM
• Instructor: Teele, Dawn Langan
• Room: Mergenthaler 366
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/8
• PosTag(s): POLI-CP, INST-CP, CES-ELECT, AGRI-ELECT

Over the seven decades since their invention, nuclear weapons have been a central focus in international politics. This course explores the fundamental question: what political arrangements ensure security from nuclear weapons? The debate has evolved through three stages. Initially (1945-1960), radical political changes were anticipated due to the perceived imminent threat of nuclear war. In the second stage (1960-1990), deterrence became a key concept, but opinions differed on the necessary conditions for it. The end of the Cold War marked an unexpected shift. In the third stage (1990-present), concerns about proliferation and terrorism emerged, leading to disagreements on preventive/pre-emptive actions versus arms control and disarmament. Realist international theories have been conflicted throughout these stages, with ongoing debates on arms control, public involvement, and the impact of nuclear security measures on liberal democratic governments.

• Days/Times: M 4:30PM - 7:00PM
• Instructor: Deudney, Daniel Horace
• Room: Ames 234
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/40
• PosTag(s): INST-IR

Humanitarianism has become a pervasive form of moral and political action in world politics. Over the course of the twentieth century and beyond, humanitarian logics infused the conduct of war and informed global governance in many areas—from refugee relief and post-conflict reconstruction, to peacekeeping and development, to migration, ecological security, and recovery from natural disasters. And yet, while often celebrated as an achievement, humanitarianism involves ambiguities, contradictions, and pathologies demanding critical scrutiny. This seminar aims, first, to interrogate critically the history of humanitarian practices and, second, to refine and revise concepts used to study and evaluate those practices. We pursue these aims in part with an eye to understanding mutations of humanitarian politics accompanying contemporary challenges to the post-WWII liberal international order. Topics include: (1) the invention of “humanity” as an idea/ideal; (2)humanitarianism, war and empire; (3) varities of humanitarianism; (4) humanitarian violence; (5) humanitarian expertise and institutions; (6) humanitarianism, media, and technology;

• Days/Times: W 4:30PM - 7:00PM
• Instructor: Barkawi, Tarak Karim; Ross, Andrew
• Room: Mergenthaler 366
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/10
• PosTag(s): POLI-IR, INST-IR, CES-ELECT

This course will survey the history of geopolitics and green industrial from China’s wind and solar push in the 1990s to the Inflation Reduction Act and beyond. We will seek to understand the determinants of industrial policy, best practices for industrial policy, and the effects of industrial policy on climate politics. The lens of geopolitics and industrial policy provides a unique avenue to understand world order. Through this lens, we will see how energy systems and technology competition animate and structure global politics.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Allan, Bentley
• Room: Mergenthaler 366
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/9
• PosTag(s): INST-IR, ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR, CES-LE, CES-PD, CES-TI, INST-GLOBAL

Over the last quarter millennium, the United States of America has been the most successful state in world politics. It has had the world’s largest economy since 1870, and was on the winning side of the three great world struggles of the 20th century. During these struggles, the fate of liberal capitalist democracy in the world has been closely connected with the rise and success of the USA. This course examines the rise and impacts of the USA in comparative and international perspective. What factors account for the success of the USA during the late modern era? How has the rise and influence of the USA shaped world politics? The course focuses on the causes, consequences and possible alternatives of three founding moments (1776-88, 1861-67 and 1933-36), the role of wars against illiberal adversaries in strengthening American liberal national identity, the ways in which the internal logics of the Philadelphian states-union (1787-1861) and the liberal international order among advanced industrial democracies (1945-) as alternatives to Westphalian state-systems, the role and consequences of the US as an anti-imperial power, and the internal dual between liberal America dedicated to the Founding principles and an ‘alt-America’ of slavery and white supremacy.

• Days/Times: T 4:30PM - 7:00PM
• Instructor: Deudney, Daniel Horace
• Room: Gilman 119
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/15
• PosTag(s): POLI-IR, INST-CP, INST-IR, CES-PD

Institutions are a ubiquitous part of political life. Much of the work of political life, both inside and outside government, is only possible through institutions - arrangements of power that provide continuity over time, have a relatively stable mission, jurisdiction and organizational structure. Democracy itself is dependent upon - but perhaps also constrained by - institutions. Institutions are subjects of profound anxiety, across the political spectrum, albeit for different reasons. Those anxieties come from fears about hierarchy, elite capture, illegitimacy, inflexibility, gerontocracy and ineffectiveness. This class will investigate the reasons for the creation and maintenance of institutions, the sources of institutional anxiety, and the challenges that this anxiety creates for the effective, responsible and democratic exercise of power

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Shilliam, Robbie; Teles, Steven Michael
• Room: Gilman 55
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): POLI-IR, INST-IR, AGRI-ELECT, CES-LSO

This course is a survey of modern political thought for advanced undergraduate students and graduate students. Its purpose is to (1) introduce some of the most significant texts in early modern European political theory, (2) survey a selection of the most important recent scholarly studies of these sources, and (3) develop theoretical and methodological skills at analyzing and interpreting the texts and the scholarship they have inspired.

• Days/Times: Th 9:00AM - 11:30AM
• Instructor: Valdez, Inés
• Room: Macaulay 101
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/8
• PosTag(s): POLI-PT, INST-PT, CES-ELECT

Open to and required for Political Science majors writing a thesis. International Studies majors writing a senior thesis under the supervision of a Political Science Department faculty member may also enroll. Topics include: research design, literature review, evidence collection and approaches to analysis of evidence, and the writing process. The course lays the groundwork for completing the thesis in the second semester under the direction of the faculty thesis supervisor. Students are expected to have decided on a research topic and arranged for a faculty thesis supervisor prior to the start of the semester. Seniors. Under special circumstances, juniors will be allowed to enroll. Enrollment limit: 15.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Marlin-Bennett, Renee E
• Room: Mergenthaler 431
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 12/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

This class introduces students to the core theories, concepts and empirical analyses of two levels of collective action analysis: social movements and advocacy organizations. We will explore current and past social movements to ask questions both fundamental (e.g. “Why do social movements start?” “Under what conditions do they succeed?”) and to look critically at the real-world constraints and opportunities contemporary advocacy organizations face.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Smithson-Stanley, Lynsy Suzanne
• Room: Hodson 211
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/18
• PosTag(s): POLI-AP, INST-AP, CES-ELECT, AGRI-ELECT

The course will focus on the origin and development of the Arab-Israeli conflict from its beginnings when Palestine was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, through World War I, The British Mandate over Palestine, and the first Arab-Israeli war (1947-1949). It will then examine the period of the Arab-Israeli wars of 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982, the Palestinian Intifadas (1987-1993 and 2000-2005); and the development of the Arab-Israeli peace process from its beginnings with the Egyptian-Israeli treaty of 1979, the Oslo I and Oslo II agreements of 1993 and 1995, Israel's peace treaty with Jordan of 1994, the Road Map of 2003; and the periodic peace talks between Israel and Syria. The conflict will be analyzed against the background of great power intervention in the Middle East, the rise of political Islam and the dynamics of Intra-Arab politics, and will consider the impact of the Arab Spring.

• Days/Times: T 4:30PM - 7:00PM
• Instructor: Freedman, Robert
• Room: Maryland 104
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 8/20
• PosTag(s): INST-IR, INST-CP

This course will explore the evolution of Russian Foreign Policy from Czarist times to the present. The main theme will be the question of continuity and change, as the course will seek to determine to what degree current Russian Foreign Policy is rooted in the Czarist(1613-1917) and Soviet(1917-1991) periods, and to what degree it has operated since 1991 on a new basis. The main emphasis of the course will be on Russia's relations with the United States and Europe, China, the Middle East and the countries of the former Soviet Union--especially Ukraine, the Baltic States, Transcaucasia and Central Asia. The course will conclude with an analysis of the Russian reaction to the Arab Spring and its impact both on Russian domestic politics and on Russian foreign policy.

• Days/Times: W 4:30PM - 7:00PM
• Instructor: Freedman, Robert
• Room: Krieger 304
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/20
• PosTag(s): POLI-IR, INST-IR, INST-CP

Over the past three decades, East Asia has been the most dynamic region in the world. East Asia has a remarkable record of high and sustained economic growth. From 1965 to 1990, the twenty-three economies of East Asia grew faster than all other regions of the world mostly thanks to the ‘miraculous growth’ of Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand; these eight countries, in fact, have grown roughly three times as fast as Latin America and South Asia, five times faster than Sub-Saharan Africa, and significantly outperformed the industrial economies and the oil-rich Middle East and North Africa regions. Poverty levels have plummeted and human-development indicators have improved across the region. The course is divided into three parts to allow students to develop expertise in one or more countries and/or policy arenas, while also cultivating a broad grasp of the region and the distinct challenges of “fast-paced, sustained economic growth.” Part I will introduce the subject, consider the origins of Asian economic development, and analyse the common economic variables behind the region’s success. It will look at the East Asian Crisis and will consider its lessons and assess whether or not East Asian countries have learned them. While the course will show that there are many common ingredients to the success of the region’s economies, it will also show that each country is different, and that differences could be, at times, quite stark. Hence, Part II will focus on the development experiences of individual countries, with a special emphasis on the ASEAN economies, NIEs, Japan and China. Finally, Part III will consider various topics of special interest to Asia, including trends toward greater regional economic cooperation, both in the real and financial/monetary sectors, and issues related to poverty, migration, and inclusiveness in the region. NOTE: Contact Dr. Dore if prerequisites are not met.

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Dore, Giovanna Maria Dora
• Room: Croft Hall G02
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/20
• PosTag(s): INST-ECON, CES-PD

Did you know that Brazil is very similar to the United States? This course is intended as an introduction to the culture and civilization of Brazil. It is designed to provide students with basic information about Brazilian history, politics, economy, art, literature, popular culture, theater, cinema, and music. The course will focus on how Indigenous, Asian, African, and European cultural influences have interacted to create the new and unique civilization that is Brazil today. The course is taught in English. No Prereq. THERE IS NO FINAL EXAM.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: De Azeredo Cerqueira, Flavia Christina
• Room: Latrobe 107
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/30
• PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL

Dystopia (from the Latin) means “bad place.” Classic literary dystopias such as We, 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 depict societies gone wrong, bad places in which socioeconomic ideas promise harmony but produce nightmarish, even apocalyptic outcomes. A common theme of dystopian fiction is the conflict between collective need and individual desire. In this course we will pursue this theme, and others, as we read works of fiction alongside influential works of socio-economic thought. One of our aims will be to tease out the buried dreams and latent possibilities in the historical realities and literary imaginings of dystopic worlds. Readings include selections from popular fiction and contemporary media as well as texts by authors such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Hayek, Rosa Luxemburg, W.E.B. Du Bois, Franz Kafka, Juli Zeh, Olivia Wenzel, Elias Canetti, Brigitte Riemann, Hannah Arendt, Frantz Fanon, Herta Müller, and Philip K. Dick.

• Days/Times: TTh 4:30PM - 5:45PM
• Instructor: Todarello, Thomas Josh
• Room: Gilman 77
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 11/14
• PosTag(s): MLL-GERM

The global political and security landscape of the 21st century will be shaped by the rivalry between two superpowers -- China and the U.S. For the foreseeable future, the geographic focus of that contest will be Southeast Asia and the surrounding maritime space, particularly the South China Sea. Southeast Asia is a complex, highly differentiated region of ten-plus nations, each with its own unique history and relationship with China. This course will introduce Southeast Asia as a key region -- geographically, economically, and strategically -- often overlooked by policymakers and scholars. It will also focus on the craft of national security strategy as the best tool for understanding the multi-sided competition, already well underway involving China, the U.S., and the Southeast Asian states.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Ott, marvin C
• Room: Mergenthaler 266
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, INST-IR

In this course, students learn from experts in the field as connected to the semester’s theme. The practitioners will present on their field of expertise thus providing students substantive engagement with a variety of perspectives relating to the central theme. Discussions with Hopkins Semester faculty will provide connection and framing for engagements with external stakeholders. Additional skills potential for development in this course include enacting policy in the world (networking, negotiations, public speaking, project management, (Political) Risk Analysis, Lobbying and Advocacy, Applying for Federal Jobs, Consulting), and others relevant to subsequent themes.

• Days/Times: T 2:30PM - 5:00PM
• Instructor: Wright Rigueur, Leah M
• Room: 555 Penn 448
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 4/15
• PosTag(s): AGRI-ELECT