Systematic introduction to the nature of politics and government, organized around the dynamic relationship between power, principle, and process in democratic politics. Provides historic and contemporary overview; explores the interactions among government, laws, and societies at the national and international levels.
General Education Code
PE-H
Introduces key concepts in political discourse and key debates generated by contested terms such as powers, ideology, and multiculturalism. Students read from canonical texts, feminist scholarship, historical materials, and contemporary cultural and postmodernist writings.
What does a citizen do? What kind of citizen activity is appropriate to democratic aspirations? Course uses political theory to answer these questions as they relate to current and historical events, primarily in the North American context. Draws on texts ranging from Aristotle, Locke, Thoreau, Ellizon, and Ranciere, as well as present-day debates, to bear on the relationship of citizen action and identity.
General Education Code
TA
Explores intellectual and empirical trends shaping the U.S. relationship with the global economy. Traces debates about liberalism and interventionism, surveys post-war American foreign economic policy and discusses varieties of capitalism emerging around the world.
Introduces the study of politics through an analysis of the United States political system and processes. Topics vary, but may include political institutions, public policies, parties and electoral politics, and social forces.
General Education Code
TA
Introduces key principles for understanding state politics in California and how power is mobilized for transformative change. Analyzes distinctive features of California's political development and culture in the governance of enduring social problems and policy dilemmas.
General Education Code
ER
Uses the tools of political science to understand the Latina/o/x community and politics within the United States. Five main themes are addressed: the politics of identity, voting, immigration, social movements, and legitimacy/trust. Within these broad categories, questions include gender, citizenship, class, sexuality, and most importantly, the complexities of power as it relates to political behavior.
Introduces the study of politics through the analysis of national political systems within or across regions from the developing world to post-industrial nations. Typical topics include: authoritarian and democratic regimes; state institutions and capacity; parties and electoral systems; public policies; social movements; ethnic conflict; and globalization.
General Education Code
CC
Introduces social policy around the world. Some countries provide free and good-quality health and education, as well as a minimum income to all citizens. Others, instead, provide meager benefits to few citizens.
Instructor
Sari Niedzwiecki
General Education Code
CC
Can common global interest prevail against particular sovereign desires? Surveys selected contemporary issues in global politics such as wars of intervention, ethnic conflict, globalization, global environmental protection, and some of the different ways in which they are understood and explained.
General Education Code
PE-H
Cross-listed Courses
Explores the central political questions surrounding global governance of climate change. Focuses on how climate change is governed within the United Nations system, and, in particular, explores issues of equity and justice in terms of how we address climate change.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 179
Examines international law and politics through the lens of cooperation on transboundary environmental problems, ranging from acid rain to toxic chemicals to biodiversity loss and climate change, which have become pressing political concerns in our increasingly globalized economy.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 170
Interdisciplinary approach to study of law in its relation to category women and production of gender. Considers various materials including critical race theory, domestic case law and international instruments, representations of law, and writings by and on behalf of women living under different forms of legal control. Examines how law structures rights, offers protections, produces hierarchies, and sexualizes power relations in both public and intimate life.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 112
Examines political, cultural, and historical dynamics in Southeast Asia from the early modern period to the present. Students explore canonical reading and some of the most influential theories of Southeast Asian studies through animal and plant life that have gastronomically served the region for centuries. This approach leads students to recognize the utility of interdisciplinary investigation and to consider how fields such as ecology, zoology, and maritime studies have been impacted by methodologically creative work in the humanities and social sciences on the region.
Cross Listed Courses
ANTH 130Z, POLI 149F
Instructor
Kathleen Gutierrez
Examines why we choose to memorialize some aspects of our history, but not others. What impact do those choices have on our contemporary politics and society? How may memorials help create a stronger democracy?
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 158
General Education Code
CC
Introduction to how individuals, societies, and states answer fundamental questions about disability, including what is or is not a disability, what causes disability, and what the proper responses to the existence of disabilities are.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 173
Instructor
Jacqueline Gehring
General Education Code
PE-H