(Offered as POSC 374, LJST 274, and EDST 374) This seminar explores the role of rights in addressing inequality, discrimination, and violence. This course will trace the evolution of rights focused legal strategies aimed at addressing injustice coupled with race, gender, disability, and citizenship status. We will evaluate how rights-based activism often creates a gap between expectation and realization. This evaluation will consider when and how rights are most efficacious in producing social change and the possibility of unintended consequences.

In this course, we will study the political thought of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. We will devote equal parts of the term to each thinker and carefully examine their efforts to theorize a variety of phenomena that still powerfully shape political life: capitalism, alienation, nihilism, the will to power, righteous moralism, rage against social constraint, the death drive, mass psychology, and more.

This course will examine the evolution and key debates about US foreign policy in the Middle East during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Key topics include the geopolitics of oil, alliances and “special relationships,” interactions with adversaries, the pursuit of regime change, and “endless wars” across the region. We will examine contemporary policy debates alongside scholarly literature that frames them in broader historical and theoretical perspectives.

(Offered as POSC 363 and HIST 363 [US/TE]) The goal in this course is to examine the geopolitics which lies at the intersection of international relations and foreign policy. But what is geopolitics and why is it as often berated as it is embraced by American politicians and policy elites alike? Over the past two centuries, what part has geopolitics played in the currents of world politics and in the conduct of American foreign policy? What role has geopolitics played in the post-Cold War era, after the demise of the Soviet Union and the ostensible triumph of liberal capitalism?

(Offered as POSC-336 and LLAS-336) This is an introduction to the study of modern Latin American politics. The overriding question is: why have democracy and self-sustained prosperity been so difficult to accomplish in the region We begin by examining different definitions of democracy. Thereafter, we discuss three democracy-related themes in Latin America. First, we focus on explaining similarities, specifically, common historical and institutional legacies that might have hindered democratic and economic development in the region.

Can popular protests affect social change? This course examines protest and other forms of popular resistance by asking questions such as: How do people bring about social change from the grassroots? Under what conditions are social movements successful? What are the implications of popular movements for democracy, good governance, and citizenship? We will study a range of popular movements and acts of resistance, including peasant protest, workers’ rights, anti-globalization protests, women’s movements, and democracy movements.

Hegel once remarked that "To read the newspaper is the modern man's morning-prayer." What may be captured in this seemingly obvious observation is a proposition that political understanding of current events is difficult to sustain without daily reading of a newspaper; that reading itself is a dynamic activity, involving interpretation; that all interpretation is, in effect, translation because in any act of reading, the reader inevitably forms a judgment as to what the text is saying.

This course will be an introduction to politics across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from the late Ottoman era to the present day. Key topics will include the history of the state system, anticolonial movements, postcolonial state building, conflict and coexistence in societies with religious and ethnic pluralism, politics of authoritarian regimes, distinctive features of the region's political economy, and dynamics of repression, resistance, revolution, and reform.

Why approach political questions philosophically? Why dream up an ideal city in order to learn about political rule and legislation? Why dwell in abstract reflections on the nature of knowledge or the structure of the soul in order to understand freedom, justice, and equality? 

This class offers an introduction to the study of international relations. In its exploration of both classic and cutting-edge research, the class sheds light on enduring debates in studies of global politics, addressing foundational puzzles in international relations, including: when are countries more likely to cooperate while facing global crises? When do crises ignite nationalism, thus pushing countries to compete for resources? When is global trade more likely to come to a halt, and why?