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This course examines key questions about the role of law and courts in American democracy, focusing in particular on the ability of American courts to fulfill the goals of democratic governance. Issues we address include: judicial review and the countermajoritarian difficulty; judicial policy making and the implementation and impact of court decisions; the response of courts to public opinion, and the responses of citizens and institutions to court decisions; social movement litigation; and methods of judicial selection and the representativeness of legal institutions.

What does it mean to study politics from below? How does immersion of the researcher in the research world contribute to the study of power? What are the promises, and perils, of social research that invites the unruly minutiae of lived experience to converse with, and contest, abstract disciplinary theories and categories? In this practice-intensive seminar, we explore ethnographic and other qualitative fieldwork methods with specific attention to their potential to subvert, generate, and extend understandings of politics and power.

As a core course in the proposed Grad Certificate in Decolonial Global Studies, this course will serve as an advanced introduction to political and social theories of coloniality and decolonization. Reading key texts within an enlarged conception of what constitutes postcolonial and decolonial thought, the seminar will address some of the most fundamental questions in social, political, and cultural theory (e.g. patriarchy, globalization, the state, racial capitalism, subjectivity, knowledge production, democracy, nationalism) from a transdisciplinary lens.

This course examines the critical role that the Supreme Court has played in shaping the landscape of rights and liberties in the United States over time. We begin with a discussion about the power and potential of textual rights protections. Then, we examine the historic rise of an organizational structure that supported legal mobilization to protect individual rights in the United States, and learn about why certain rights were protected before others.

Seminars involving various problems and themes of mutual interest among faculty and graduate students. Recent topics have included studies of Christianity, Greek tragedy, theories of interpretation, theories of conspicuous consumption.

At the end of this course students should 1. Be able to understand and apply the scientific method to the study of politics, particularly as it pertains to modern survey methodology in the collection and analysis of data. 2. Fluently consume and critique political science literature using and on survey research methods. 3. Be able to design survey research studies with a clear understanding of issues related to inference, identify threats to causal inference, and suggest solutions to those threats. 4. Be in a position to design and implement surveys measuring public opinion.

Survey of theory, research, and methodology in the field of international relations; its interdisciplinary dimensions.

Provides an introduction to comparative politics by giving students an opportunity to read, discuss, and write about canonical works in the field. Students will learn to use a generic framework to make sense of the methodological and explanatory choices made in any piece of comparative politics research, and to understand the strengths and weaknesses that attend those choices.