POLITICAL THEORY I

This course considers key questions at the foundation of political thought.  What is justice?  How do we justify the coercive power of states? Do we have an obligation to obey the government? Who should make and enforce the law?  What basic rights and liberties should governments protect? How should our economic system produce and divide wealth and material resources?  What are the claims of excluded or marginalized groups and how can these claims be addressed?   We explore these questions through the works of several classical and contemporary political thinkers.  A major goal of the course is to practice the skills needed to understand a political thinker’s arguments and to construct one’s own.

• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Alyssa Battistoni
  Info
• 4 points

POLITICAL THEORY I-DISC

• W 6:10 p.m.-7 p.m.
• W 7:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• M 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• M 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• W 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• W 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• T 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• T 6:10 p.m.-7 p.m.
• F 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• M 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Evan Gregoire
  Info
• 0 points

COLL: CAPITALISM AND ITS CRITICS

COLL: CAPITALISM & ITS CR

Capitalism is usually thought of as an economic system, but what does it have to do with politics? This course examines how thinkers of contrasting perspectives have understood capitalism politically. Some have celebrated the market as an escape from coercion, while others criticize it as a source of disguised domination; some see capitalism as leveling social hierarchies, while others point to its creation of class and racial hierarchy; some see capitalism as an engine of wealth creation and heightened living standards, while others emphasize its destruction of existing ways of life and production of inequality; some see capitalism as an engine of peace, while others emphasize its reliance on violence. In particular, we will consider the relationship between state and market, moral critiques of markets and exchange, analyses of the role of force and violence in accumulation, and theories of freedom and domination.

• W 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Alyssa Battistoni
  Info
• 4 points

COLL:PROBLMS IN INTNL SECURITY

COLL:PROBLMS IN INT'L SECURITY

Prerequisites: POLS V1501 or POLS V1601 or the equivalent. Admission by application through the Barnard department only. Enrollment limited to 16 students. Barnard syllabus. Examination of causes and consequences of major current problems in international security. Topics will focus on state power dynamics: the rise of China and the reemergence of the Russian military, challenges facing NATO with the rise of populism and authoritarianism in the West, nuclear deterrence and proliferation, cyber conflict and information war, and chemical and biological weapons.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Kimberly Marten
  CULPA: 71 Wikipedia h-index: 19 Info
• 4 points

PUBLIC OPINION AND AMERICAN D

In this course, we will examine the relationship between government and the governed in the United States. To what extent and under what circumstances do elected officials consider public preferences in making policy? To what extent and under what circumstances might we want them to? What kind of power should the public have in American democracy? Thinking about the second and third, more normative questions leads us to other empirical questions. What shapes public preferences? How well can we measure them? How much do people know and care about politics? How do they evaluate their representatives? What constitutes high quality representation? We will examine these kinds of questions broadly, and also consider how they play out in particular policy areas and historical moments. We will also discuss the dynamics of public opinion across population subgroups (e.g. by race, sex, income, party, urbanity, etc.), and questions surrounding representation at the group level. In addition to engaging scholarly literature on public opinion and representation, students will also learn to access, manage, and analyze data measuring the composition of the public (e.g. the U.S. Census) as well as public views on political candidates, officeholders, institutions, and issues (e.g. survey data). These skills will help to prepare students for research projects in other courses and beyond Barnard. To balance the different aims of the course, our class time will be split between lecture, discussion, and hands-on lessons in a computer lab.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Katherine L Krimmel
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 3 points

COLLOQUIUM IN BLUE COLLAR POLITICS

COLL: BLUE COLLAR POLITIC

Since 2016, scholars and journalists alike have been paying more attention to “Working Class
Voters.” While these voters have always been an important bloc within the American political
system, recent events underscore the need to understand the political behavior of a broad swath
of the voting public. Similarly, American political life is increasingly polarized by place, with
Republicans concentrated in rural areas and Democrats in urban ones. Class and place are
therefore essential variables for understanding modern American politics.
In this course—which is taught by an instructor from a rural, working-class background—we
will examine the identity, opinions, behavior and power of the American working class. We will
also consider the role of place in shaping American politics. We will employ sources from
several social sciences, including political science, sociology, and economics. Along the way, we
will consider several important questions about working class politics within the context of
broader topics in these fields: Identity formation, parties, race, elections, and public opinion, to
name a few.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael Miller
  CULPA: 18 h-index: 14 Info
• 4 points

VOTING & POLITICAL BEHAVIOR

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Michael Miller
  CULPA: 18 h-index: 14 Info
• 3 points

FIRST AMENDMENT VALUES

Prerequisites: POLS W1201 or an equivalent. Not an introductory course. Not open to students who have taken the colloquium POLS BC3302. Examines the first amendment rights of speech, press, religion and assembly. In-depth analysis of landmark Supreme Court rulings provides the basis for exploring theoretical antecedents as well as contemporary applications of such doctrines as freedom of association, libel, symbolic speech, obscenity, hate speech, political speech, commercial speech, freedom of the press and religion. (Cross-listed by the American Studies Program.)

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Paula A Franzese
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

INTRO CONTEMP CHINESE POLITICS - DISC

INTRO CONT CHINESE POLTCS

Discussion Section for POLS-UN3620 Introduction to Contemporary Chinese Politics

• T noon-12:50 p.m.
• R 1 p.m.-1:50 p.m.
• F 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Yu Cheng
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 3 Info
• 0 points

Slavery & Its Afterlives

SLAVERY & ITS AFTERLIVES

This course examines what Saidiya Hartman calls the ‘afterlife of slavery.’ By drawing from readings in cultural studies, Black feminist theory, sociology, philosophy, and decolonial thought, the class explores questions surrounding the archive of transatlantic slavery and its afterlives. A crucial goal of the course is to engage critically the meaning of sexuality, intimacy, reproduction, labor, and domination in slaveholding societies. Throughout the course, students will discuss how the afterlives of slavery inform current ethical debates on issues like: sexual violence, reparations, surveillance, criminalization, incarceration, housing, militarism, imperialism, distribution of wealth, environmental racism, education, mental illness, political participation, and anti-colonial activism. The course is therefore structured less as a historical survey of slavery and more as an investigation as to how slavery is remembered and its rhetorical function when reasoning about today’s moral and political controversies. Special attention is paid to how a study of slavery’s afterlives challenges narratives of U.S. exceptionalism and innocence, as well as stories commonly told about freedom, emancipations, and racial progress.

• F 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Roberto Sirvent
  Info
• 4 points

COLL: RELIGION AND POLITICS

This course is intended to introduce students to the modern tradition of Western Christian political thought, with an emphasis on the theological underpinnings of political theory. A significant focus will revolve around the ethics of citizenship. Key readings explore topics like religious violence, the historical construction of “religion”, decolonial approaches to religious studies, the politics of secularism, the ethics of patriotism, and the role of faith in electoral politics. In an attempt to unsettle commonly held views about religion and science, the colloquium also examines current debates around environmental justice, natural history museums, medical ethics, and the corporate space race. Other topics in the seminar include Afro-Caribbean spiritualities, the legacy of activist Sylvia Rivera, theorizations of an “abolitionist faith,” and the intersection of critical pedagogy and liberation theology. The seminar concludes by examining the role of religion in revolts, rebellions, and maroon communities throughout the Americas.  Throughout the class, students will explore how theology and spirituality can serve as important resources for liberation movements and for broader struggles against empire, colonialism, and capitalism.

• F noon-1:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Roberto Sirvent
  Info
• 4 points

COL:SOVEREIGNTY& ITS CHALLNGS

• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Alexander A Cooley
  CULPA: 22 h-index: 33 Info
• 4 points

COLL: LAW AND VIOLENCE

Prerequisites: Admission by application through the Barnard Political Science Department only. Enrollment limited to 16 students. Requires POLS 1011 (Political Theory) or equivalent. This colloquium examines how the law can participate in the justification of various forms of violence, exclusion, and inequality. It focuses on the power of law to determine which subjects get recognized as persons entitled to rights. Possible topics include slavery, migration, gender, sexual orientation, disability, homelessness, and nonhuman animals.

• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Ayten Gundogdu
  CULPA: 20 h-index: 8 Info
• 4 points

COLL: GENDER & PUBLIC POLICY

In this course, we will examine how notions of sex and gender have shaped public policies, and how public policies have affected the social, economic, and political citizenship of men and women in the United States over time.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Katherine L Krimmel
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 4 points

COLLOQUIUM ON ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN THE

COLL: ECON INEQUALITY IN

In recent decades, economic inequality in the United States has soared to levels not seen for nearly a century: Wages for workers have stagnated, while the proportion of wealth concentrated among the most well-off Americans has steadily increased. These trends may have dire consequences for the state of representative democracy in the United States, as they endow a relatively small number of citizens with a disproportionate amount of resources to deploy politically. The result is a political system that often responds to the preferences of the wealthiest Americans, while frequently ignoring the views of most ordinary citizens.

This course, in diverse ways, explores the political causes and consequences of rising inequality, especially with regards to who has political power. We will begin by examining the contours of inequality in the U.S. while also exploring the various ways that power manifests itself in politics. We’ll then explore the relationship between wealth and public policy outcomes in the United States, along with the ways that the very wealthiest Americans – both individually and collectively – work to advance their policy views. Beyond just examining national-level politics, we will also discuss inequality and power on the state- and local-levels. We’ll then explore how political and economic inequality are interrelated with race and social class, and how all of this connects to the rise of Donald Trump. Finally, we will assess potential remedies to political and economic inequality.

• F 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Roberto Sirvent
  Info
• 4 points

COLL: URBAN VIOLENCE

• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Eduardo Moncada
  CULPA: 2 h-index: 12 Info
• 4 points

CIVIL RIGHTS &CIVIL LIBERTIES

Prerequisites: POLS W1201 or the equivalent. Not an introductory-level course. Not open to students who have taken the colloquium POLS BC3326. Enrollment limited to 25 students; L-course sign-up through eBear. Barnard syllabus. Explores seminal caselaw to inform contemporary civil rights and civil liberties jurisprudence and policy. Specifically, the readings examine historical and contemporary first amendment values, including freedom of speech and the press, economic liberties, takings law, discrimination based on race, gender, class and sexual preference, affirmative action, the right to privacy, reproductive freedom, the right to die, criminal procedure and adjudication, the rights of the criminally accused post-9/11 and the death penalty. (Cross-listed by the American Studies and Human Rights Programs.)

• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Paula A Franzese
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

COLL:CONSTRUCTNG STATES NATIONS

COLL: CONSTRUCTNG STATES NATN

Prerequisites: POLS V1501 or the equivalent. Admission by application through the Barnard department only. Enrollment limited to 16 students. The course will examine the development of, and relationship among, the three constituent features of the modern political world: states, nations and democracy. The course will analyze both historical and contemporary cases, tracing how causal processes unfold over time and space and what past conditions and experiences lie behind todays political dynamics and problems.

• T 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Sheri Berman
  CULPA: 19 Wikipedia h-index: None Info
• 4 points

DRUGS & POLITICS IN AMERICAS

A major challenge for governments across the Western Hemisphere is the complex relationship between illicit drugs, violence, and politics. We can see this relationship operating at multiple levels, from everyday politics in gang-controlled neighborhoods to the global arenas where governments debate and craft international drug policy. These links also reach back in history to global wars of empire and colonial rule, race relations during and following the collapse of the institution of slavery, and contemporary drug wars being waged across the Western Hemisphere and other parts of the world. Today, the dynamics and consequences of the politics of illicit drugs touch all our lives in different ways, including individual and family struggles with substance abuse, everyday encounters with militarized police, and the strains on democracy and citizenship, among many others. This course will examine some of these dynamics and consequences with a theoretical and empirical focus mainly on Latin America and the United States. Throughout our time together we will connect these pressing issues to broader theories, concepts and empirical findings in political science. The course is divided into several individual modules (denoted below with the headings A – G) under three overarching themes for this semester:

 

1. Politics of Drugs in a Historical Perspective:
The first theme is a broad historical overview of the political origins of illicit drugs and the global drug regime. Some of the main questions we will tackle are: When and why did states label drugs as illicit?  How did domestic and global politics come together to shape the global drug regime and the “war on drugs?” What role did race and gender play in the early social construction of illicit drugs?

 

2. Illicit Drugs, Politics and Governance:
The second theme focuses on contemporary linkages between illicit drugs, violence, and politics. Here we will examine the conditions under which illicit drug markets are either violent or (relatively) peaceful. We will tackle questions like: Do states always seek to dismantle drug markets? What is the relationship between illicit drugs and electoral politics? What role do illicit drugs play in governance by armed non-state actors?  Are states and criminal actors involved in the drug trade always at “war” with each other? 


3. Democracy, Citizenship, and the War on Drugs:
The th

• MW 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Eduardo Moncada
  CULPA: 2 h-index: 12 Info
• 4 points

DRUGS & POLITICS IN THE AMERICAS - DISC

DRUGS & POLITICS - DISC

Discussion Section for POLS-UN3565 Drugs and Politics in the Americas

• W 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• W 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Juan Corredor-Garcia
  Info
• 0 points

INTRO CONTEMP CHINESE POLITICS

This undergraduate course is designed to introduce to students who have limited knowledge of China some basic aspects of political institutions and processes as well as major events in Chinese political life under the communists since 1949, focusing on the post-Mao reform period since 1978. It examines economic and political development in China--their causes, patterns, consequences, and implications--in a broader context of transition from authoritarianism and state socialism. In this class, we will apply some concepts and theories in comparative politics in analyzing Chinese politics. By taking this class, students are expected to gain substantial knowledge about contemporary Chinese politics and acquire some basic ability to apply such knowledge to relate to and analyze current affairs concerning China.

 

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Xiaobo Lu
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 4 points

COLL:POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

COLL:POLITCS OF DEVELOPMENT

Prerequisites: V 1501 or equivalent Description: The semester-long course aims to study political and social factors behind economic development and exam empirical cases of the success and failure in economic growth in order to understand the key features of the development processes. In the last two centuries, some countries successfully achieved economic growth and development, while other failed to do so. Even in the post-WWII period, the world has witnessed the rise and decline of economies around the world. Why do nations succeed or fail in economic development? How do political institutions affect economic outcomes? What are the ways in which state and market interact and influence each other? Can democracy be considered a cause of development, an outgrowth of development, or neither and to which extent? How do external factors such as foreign aid encourage or discourage development? We will try to examine these questions by taking a historical-institutional and comparative approach and take a critical look at the role of political and other institutions by applying theoretical guidelines and empirical cases. We will explore competing explanations for the successes and failures of economic development in the world. Objective:1. Understand some important concepts and theories within the fields of comparative politics and political economy. To explore the interconnections between politics, economy, and society in the context of development policy and practice.2. Develop basic analytic skills to explore various factors that shape political, economic, and social development and underdevelopment in the world;3. Understand some country specific political economy processes and how these processes prove or disprove certain theories and policies.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Xiaobo Lu
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 4 points

EUROPEAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

Prerequisites: Course in European history or political science or relevant comparative politics courses. This is an upper-level course in European political development. It is designed for undergraduates who already have some exposure to European history and politics and graduate students. The course will analyze important theoretical works, and debates about, the evolution of European political systems and institutions since the Second World War and place the European experience in comparative perspective 

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Sheri Berman
  CULPA: 19 Wikipedia h-index: None Info
• 4 points

RUSSIA AND THE WEST

Exploration of Russias ambiguous relationship with the Western world. Cultural, philosophical, and historical explanations will be examined alongside theories of domestic political economy and international relations, to gain an understanding of current events. Select cases from the Tsarist, Soviet, and recent periods will be compared and contrasted, to see if patterns emerge.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Kimberly Marten
  CULPA: 71 Wikipedia h-index: 19 Info
• 3 points