Topics course. This seminar will examine the ways in which we ask and answer questions about inequality. We will study inequality and related social policy in the United States, with special attention to the methodological choices of the authors we read, and the kinds of answers that these methodological choices make possible. We will draw on texts from political science, sociology, and anthropology, and the reading list for the course will be adjusted as we go to ensure that the interests of the participants in the seminar are well represented.

A study of Machiavellian power-politics and of efforts by social contract and utilitarian liberals to render that politics safe and humane. Topics considered include: political behavior, republican liberty, empire and war; the state of nature, natural law/natural right, sovereignty, and peace; limitations on power, the general will, and liberalism?s relation to moral theory, religion, and economics. Readings from Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Smith and others; also novels and plays.

What is the relationship between ethnicity and politics? When does ethnic difference lead to competition and conflict? Does coethnicity encourage greater cooperation and provision of public goods? We will explore these and related questions looking at experiences across the world. Though we will read scholarship from the American context, the focus will be on ethnicity and politics in other countries. Enrollment limit of 20 students.

After a brief discussion of the origins, evolution and collapse of the Soviet system, this course will focus on the politics of contemporary Russia. Issues to be addressed include constitutional change, electoral behavior, the role of civil society, and the course of economic reform.

In this course we will focus on a central tension in American democracy: the conflict between the desire to limit factionalism, and the desire to allow individuals to assemble in order to use their massed political power to ensure equality. On the one hand, democracy must avoid the existence o factions large and powerful enough to tyrannize those outside the faction. On the other hand, it must allow individuals to form organizations in order to leverage greater amounts of political power, else the clash of differing interests would be likely to cause democracy to grind to a halt.

An examination and analysis of electoral politics in the United States. Voting and elections are viewed in the context of democracy. Topics include electoral participation, presidential selection, campaigns, electoral behavior, public opinion, parties, and Congressional elections.

The study of Supreme Court decisions, documents, and other writings dealing with Constitutional theory and interpretation. Special attention is given to understanding the institutional role of the Supreme Court. Not open to first-year students.

This course will serve as a comprehensive grammar review. In addition to a grammar textbook, we will be using several other sources to stimulate class discussion, as well as to improve reading comprehension, writing skills and vocabulary-building in Portuguese: short stories by writers from the Portuguese-speaking world, music, and film. Enrollment limited to 18.  Prerequisite: 100y or POR 125 or its equivalent.

This interdisciplinary lecture course explores topics at the intersection of the life and mathematical sciences. The course includes three modules, each of which introduces students to a biomath research question. Students work in groups to collect data and investigate modeling and analytical tools that can reveal meaning in the data. Each module is co-taught by two faculty members, one from the life sciences and one from the quantitative sciences. The emphasis throughout the course is on formulating lines of inquiry and learning to develop and test conceptual models. Open to all students.

This course will focus on a series of perspectives that examine the workings of power. These will include Bourdieu, critical race, feminist, Foucault, Marxist, and post-structuralist and queer theories. The course will span the very micro-bases of social life, starting with the body, to the very macro-ending with the nation-state and the world system. On the macro side specific attention will be given to the neoliberal state, including welfare and incarceration.