Pre-registration for seminars is not permitted. Instructor permission is required before registration. Please see here for detailed seminar registration guidelines.

Section 001: Bill of Rights
Professor Martha Zebrowski
This seminar is an investigation of the nature and importance of the federal Bill of Rights in the American federal and state constitutional systems. Common readings, class discussions, and student seminar papers consider the social, political, and legal significance of the Bill of Rights in historical and contemporary American discourse and analysis, along with constitutional case law regarding specific rights. The first part of the course is devoted to a discussion of common, required readings that consider the Bill of Rights in historical and contemporary perspective. The second part of the course is devoted to students' presentations, in class, of their own research on individual topics relating to a particular rights grounded in the American federal and state bills of rights.

Section 002: Issues that Divide America
Professor Irwin Gertzog
Seminar focuses on four political issues so contentious that they have produced enduring cultural, socio-economic, and political divisions throughout the United States. The four issues are slavery and efforts to end it; the use of alcoholic beverages and the struggle to curtail it; abortion and attempts to prohibit it; and lesbian and gay rights and the battle to impede them.

Section 003: Policy Making
Professor Judith Russell
This seminar directs readings and research on public policymaking in the American federal government.. It is designed to help students think analytically about the ways in which the structures, processes and actors at the heart of public policymaking interact. It examines how political institutions--the executive and legislative branches--are organized and motivated to produce policy, the politics of government organization, bureaucratic operation and survival, how the budget process drives policymaking processes, policy structures and relationships that have emerged out of custom and practice, theories and models of decision making, concepts of rationality and choice, agenda-setting, political innovation, interest groups' role in policy formation as well as that of the judiciary. Specific policy areas we will engage as case studies are: economic and employment policy, energy and environmental policy, and policy responses to terrorism and disaster. Some policy investigations we will engage are evolving as we study them during the semester.

Section 004: Equality & the Law
Professor Robert Amdur

Section 005: Bureaucratic Politics
Professor Michael Ting
This course is a comprehensive, high-level introduction to American bureaucracies and their study. It is appropriate for any student with an interest in American political institutions and a background in political science and economics. Topics include the working environment of bureaucrats, the external institutional environment, and the roles played by various agencies in the American political system.

Section 006: African American Politics
Professor Fredrick Harris
The course considers the struggle of African Americans for inclusion in the American political system. Primary topics will include the historical development of black activism, the role of black leadership, the transformation from protest to mainstream politics since the civil rights movement, and the consequences of blacks' incorporation into the channels of mainstream political institutions.

Section 007: Terrorism & Counterterrorism
Professor Brigitte Nacos
The seminar is designed to illuminate students' understanding of the most important aspects of domestic and international terrorism with an emphasis on the United States as target of and responder to this sort of political violence.

Section 008: Media & American Politics
Professor Kathleen Knight
Both conventional wisdom and scholarly research about the role of the mass media in American politics have changed rapidly in a very short period of time. This course explores the influence of the mass media on politics with attention to changes in the relationship between the media and government. We will start with consideration of the historical role of the mass media and how it has changed. Then we will focus on the question of how much real influence the media have, and how it is exercised. This will involve examination of media treatment of substantive topics of current interest. These will include the fall political campaigns, the war, and additional topics chosen on the basis of student interest. This is a research seminar in American politics. Students are expected to engage in original empirical research on one of several topics in mass media and politics and to contribute to group efforts on data collection, coding, fact checking, cross-verification and review. In the event of excess demand, an application process with take place at the first class meeting.

Fall - 2009