In this course we explore the relations between science and politics. Are science and politics two distinct domains of life, and if so, what differentiates them? How do they interact? We know that policies can be based on scientific research, and that scientific priorities can be shaped by political motives. But does scientific research ever resemble politics? Can politics affect, not just scientific objectives, but the very content of knowledge or truth? We will explore these questions by studying two major theorists of science and politics: Michel Foucault and Bruno Latour.

This course examines the topic of authoritarianism in Latin America, with an emphasis on current regional processes and cases. Drawing on the historical background of the phenomenon and the new socioeconomic realities and states that emerged after the independence movements and in the 20th century, the course addresses the institutional and ideological foundations of non-democratic forms of power. Finally, a select set of four current cases (Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Venezuela) are analyzed, covering a variety of specific regime forms and autocratic processes.

Nationalist fervor seemed likely to diminish once so-called Third World nations achieved independence. However, the past few years have witnessed the resurgence and transformation of nationalism in the post-colonial world. Where anti-colonial nationalist movements appeared to be progressive forces of social change, many contemporary forms of nationalism appear to be reactionary. Did nationalist leaders and theoreticians fail to identify the exclusionary qualities of earlier incarnations of nationalism? Were they blind to its chauvinism? Or has nationalism become increasingly intolerant?

What types of institutions can regulate or resolve intercommunal conflict in states with deep national, ethnic, or religious divisions? How can people share power after intercommunal violence? States with separatist movements, histories of civil wars, and various forms of structural domination often develop power-sharing arrangements that segment societies along sectoral lines. Through what processes of constitutional design do such power-sharing arrangements emerge in conflicted or post-conflict societies?

Other than war, punishment is the most dramatic manifestation of state power. Who a society punishes and how it punishes are key political questions as well as indicators of its character. The character of punishment in the United States has been shaped, throughout American history, by race. This course considers connections between punishment, politics, and culture in this country. We will consider whether we punish too much and too severely, or too little and too leniently, and the ways race has shaped the ways we punish.

(Offered as SWAG 346 and POSC 343)  In this course, we study the political visions of four major twentieth-century theorists: Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Herbert Marcuse, and Michel Foucault. What forms of power did each of these thinkers surface? What social transformations did they call for? How did they imagine that transformation could be achieved?

(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.

This course is a study of aspects of the canon of American political thought. While examining the roots of American thought in Puritanism and Quakerism, the primary focus will be on American transcendentalism and its impact on subsequent thought. Among those whose works we are likely to consider are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, W.E.B. DuBois, William James, Jane Addams, John Dewey, Martin Luther King, Hannah Arendt, Richard Rorty, and Stanley Cavell.

Russia was among the first nations in the world to face political terrorism when in the 1870s the leftist People's Will group launched the hunt for Tsar Alexander II. The terrorist trend continued into the twentieth century; in 1918, the Socialist Revolutionary Party attempted to assassinate Lenin. Eradicated by Stalin, terrorism resurfaced in the 1990s, when Russia found itself under attack by Chechen separatists.

What is the European Union? How and why did it start? Where is it headed? Will it become stronger and grow into a full-fledged United States of Europe? Will it become weaker and join the ranks of typical international organizations, following the various crises it has confronted on several dimensions: economic, migration, political - in particular, concerning its impact on sovereignty, democracy, identity, and legitimacy?