Political Science 783 - Theories of Interpretation

This course will focus on general approaches to the problem of interpretation in texts and social practices. All areas of political science research entail the investigation of written, spoken, or visual evidence, including books, archival documents of all kinds, speeches, verbal explanations by actors of their actions, images, and so on. These various materials require interpretation, different materials posing different problems for the interpreter. This course is meant to encourage reflection upon the interpretive act. Among the issues to be discussed are those of intentionality, agency, contextualism, objectivity, and method. Readings will be drawn from several major schools of interpretation, including hermeneutics, Critical Theory, the so-called Cambridge school of the history of political thought, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralist and post-structuralist anthropology as well as from approaches less easily characterized.

This course is open to Political Science Graduate students only.