School of Public Policy 621 - Using the Past: Methods

A lot of policy work is contingent on who gets to leverage, correct, or tell the story of the past. This course will push students to think about the historical context of policy work. We will learn a variety of ways of studying past policies using historical methods and discuss in detail the politics of how we remember (and forget) policies. This course will focus on both polices with obvious historical context (like confederate memorials or reparations), and examples where the past is less obvious (like privacy and social media).