Looking for some PoliSci for your fall schedule? One of these -- one-time opportunities! taught by visiting profs! -- may be just what you need. As of the morning of 9/10/2024, all have some space available:
POLS-BC3114 Colloquium on African American Political Thought
Professor Jon Keller
(Social Sciences GER, Thinking About Social Difference)
This
seminar level course explores the history and the present of African
American political theory and practice, through an analysis of
theoretical texts, pamphlets/manifestos, and popular culture from the
periods of the abolitionist movement, Reconstruction, civil rights, late
20th century Black feminist thought, and contemporary Black politics
and culture. This course emphasizes the way that Black activists,
scholars, and/or artists have responded to eternal questions in
political thought about freedom, oppression, resistance, citizenship,
democracy, etc., from the standpoint of Blackness in the United States.
Moreover, the course is not just African-American Political Thought, it
is also American Political Thought, insofar as Black theorizations and
experiences of America provides a vital framework for interrogating the
American experiment, citizenship and non- citizenship, American slavery
and its afterlives, inclusion and exclusion, liberation and domination,
and ultimately what “America” is and what it does (and perhaps could)
mean to be American.
Students interested in
this course should be sophomores or above. Interested students should
waitlist and attend the next class meeting.
POLS-BC3407 Democracy's Guardrails?
Professor Marjorie Castle
(Social Sciences GER, Thinking Through Global Inquiry, Thinking With Historical Perspective)
The
speed and smoothness of democratic backsliding and the suddenness of
democratic breakdowns tend to surprise us. We expect established
institutions and parties, as well as the individuals socialized in
democratic norms who populate them, to remain loyal to democracy. But
instead we often see both hard and soft guardrails of democracy
(institutions and norms) crumble, as various combinations of judges,
capitalists, party activists, bureaucrats, military officers, and
law-enforcement personnel accept and even support the actions of
aspiring authoritarians. In this course we will explore why and when
this happens—and also look at conditions that might prevent this from
happening.
Our focus will be specific—not on the would-be
dictators or on structural forces that might shape these processes but
on those institutions and actors that might be considered the bystanders
or enablers of democratic reversals. Our readings will include
political science literature on democratic breakdowns and fracturing of
elite consensus, political norms, and strategic games of transition, but
we will also read selections of relevant histories and memoirs. We will
consider cases of breakdown and backsliding from 1930s Germany to 1970s
Chile to twenty-first-century Hungary, Poland, and the United
States—always focusing on potential guardrails.
POLS-BC3418 Sovereignty, Democracy, and the European Union
Professor Marjorie Castle
(Social Sciences GER, Thinking Through Global Inquiry)
As
a supranational organization—in which states transfer portions of their
sovereign decision-making powers to the organization as a higher
authority—the European Union is unique. The impact of this extraordinary
organization on the ability of individual member-states to achieve
promised goals of prosperity and peace is often the primary focus of
analyses. But there is another important question: Is the European Union
good or bad for democracy in individual states? This course examines
the impact of the European Union on the politics of prospective, actual,
and former member-states. The benefits and constraints of EU
membership--indeed, even the prospect of membership--were expected to
foster and shore up democracy, but the relationships here may turn out
to be much more complex than imagined. In fact, since political backlash
can result in states leaving the EU this is an urgent question for the
future of the EU itself.
As a class we will explore the
political impact of the EU—its accession processes, its policies, its
institutional incentives, the constraints it creates--on member states.
After introducing key concepts and acquiring and confirming a shared
understanding of the EU itself (no previous background knowledge is
required), we’ll look at how the prospect and the reality of joining the
EU may affect political incentives and outcomes within individual
states. We then switch gears and focus on Brexit, the departure of the
United Kingdom from the European Union, considering both its causes in
British politics and its consequences for British democracy. Next we
examine conflicts between the EU and individual member-states, most
notably Hungary and Poland, over the rule of law. Our meetings on these
topics will use both lecture and discussion. In the final weeks’
simulation you will make use of all you have learned as you play the
role of a political actor from a particular member state in negotiations
over revisions to the Treaty of Lisbon.
