Materials include biographies, documentary films, short videos, economic data, and news reports. Paying attention to common oppositions such as nature/civilization, primitive/advanced, anarchy/social order, feminine/masculine, ruler/ruled and stasis/progress, we will investigate how these antagonisms work together to create the conception of the state that still dominates politics today. is to obtain an enhanced understanding and appreciation of the salience of religion in public life. The course integrates theoretical perspectives related to a range of international security issues--including the causes of war, alliance politics, nuclear strategy, deterrence, coercion, reassurance, misperception, and credibility concerns--with illustrative case studies of decision-makers in action. Case studies will include antislavery politics and the American Civil War; the global crises of the 1930s and 1940s; and the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Do science and technology serve to transform or reinforce power imbalances based on gender, race, and sexuality? The purpose is to gain an understanding of a number of different perspectives on life and politics, especially Confucianism, Legalism and Daoism. Course cap: 19 What defines optimism, pessimism, enslavement, freedom, creativity, and being human? How is the office and purpose of the presidency affected by an economic order predicated on private capital? It will pay particular attention to the ANC and corruption, and it will address why, thus far, the ANC has won national elections handily amidst growing dissatisfaction with overt and pervasive official corruption and misgovernment and the role racial solidarities and memories play in sustaining the ANC in office. In this course, we will seek to understand the challenges liberal, cosmopolitan leadership has encountered in the 21st century and the reasons why populist, nationalist leadership has proven resurgent. rise of totalitarianism, and the detonation of the first atomic bomb. [more], "Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders. The effort to understand politics aims not only to describe and explain, but also to improve political life. Who gets to make these judgments, and according to what rules? In this course we will look at how people in the United States and elsewhere have used their leaders' images to hash out larger political issues of national identity, purpose, and membership. Through the lens of coastal and ocean governance and policy-making, we critically examine conflict of use issues relative to climate change, climate justice, coastal zone management, fisheries, ocean and coastal pollution and marine biodiversity. You are unlikely to be trampled by a mammoth. Throughout the semester, we will not only approach these questions from the joint perspectives of theory and practice but also seek to enrich our understanding by exploring American democracy as it happens all around us with several exercises in the community at large. Is it freedom, empowerment, privilege, or oppression? This class examines the policy making process with particular emphasis on the United States: How do issues get defined as problems worthy of government attention? Importantly, this course is not intended as a partisan critique of any particular American politician or political party. Or is economic crisis the key to understanding the conditions under which dictatorships fall? Cohabitation has skyrocketed but marriage is disappearing, and the country's birth rate is at an all-time low. Is intense security competition between major states inevitable, or can they get along, provided their main interests are protected? What is at stake, and what do different groups believe to be at stake? In this seminar we will openly discuss unmentionable topics and get our hands dirty (sometimes literally) examining the politics of waste. What is "objectivity" anyway, and how has this norm changed through history? Primary papers are due to respondent/professor 48hrs before the tutorial meets; response papers are emailed to the professor 2hours before the weekly tutorial meets. While our examples will be drawn mainly from family law, the regulation of sex/reproduction, and workplace discrimination, the main task of this course will be to deepen our understanding of how the subject of law is constituted. The purpose is to gain an understanding of a number of different perspectives on life and politics, especially Confucianism, Legalism and Daoism. It looks at how difference works and has worked, how identities and power relationships have been grounded in lived experience, and how one might both critically and productively approach questions of difference, power, and equity. than taking the Senior Seminar-in their subfield of specialization. remained a vulnerable, segregated, and stigmatized minority population. POLITICAL SCIENCE. Other critics take aim at the two-party system with the claim that the major parties fail to offer meaningful choices to citizens. These failures have created space for a politics of populism, ethno-nationalism, and resentment--an "anti-leadership insurgency" which, paradoxically, has catapulted charismatic (their critics would say demagogic) leaders to the highest offices of some of the largest nations on earth. Why do we end up with some policies but not others? We will critically analyze how those categories are constructed at the international and domestic levels, as well as how those categorizations are also racialized, politicized, and gendered. Are there forms of unequal social power which are morally neutral or even good? The course introduces students to the comparative politics of South Asia, highlighting the complexities and potential of the region. [more], The emergence of Rastafari in the twentieth century marked a distinct phase in the theory and practice of political agency. [more]. Is there a resource curse, or is it possible for mineral rich countries to escape the modern counterparts of Midas? We will discuss a range of thinkers including Dionne Brand, Aim Csaire, Angela Davis, douard Glissant, Kwame Gyekye, Paget Henry, bell hooks, Katherine McKittrick, Charles Mills, Nkiru Nzegwu, Oyrnke Oyewm, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Cornel West, and Sylvia Wynter. All students read common secondary materials and engage in research design workshops; each will write (and rewrite) an independent research paper grounded in primary sources. This course investigates the political theory of Rastafari in order to develop intellectual resources for theorizing the concept of agency in contemporary Africana thought and political theory. From the Founding to the present, the American political order has undergone cataclysmic and thoroughgoing transformations, yet it has also proven to be remarkably enduring. Richard Nixon hoped to conclude a peace with honor when he assumed the presidency, but the war lasted for another four years with many additional casualties. The course investigates family models in historical and comparative context; the family and the welfare state; the economics of sex, gender, marriage, and class inequality; the dramatic value and behavioral changes of Gen Z around sex, cohabitation, and parenthood; and state policies to encourage partnership/marriage and childbearing in both left-wing (Scandinavia) and right-wing (Central Europe) variants. We will study figures and movements for black lives whose geopolitics frame the milieu of Wynter's work. the Silicon Valley model and other countries' attempts to emulate it. America First? [more], Noam Chomsky emerged as one of the most influential figures in the development of modern linguistics during the 1950's. On the other hand, shifting ideas about science have strongly influenced the development of feminist theory and practice: for example, debates about reproductive rights are often couched in terms of a conflict between reliable scientific knowledge of embryos, STDs, etc. It will not only survey the history of the nuclear age--and of individual countries' nuclear development--but also grapple with important contemporary policy dilemmas in the nuclear realm. Catalog Williams Catalog Courses and Programs 2022-23 Political Science Political Science Spring 2022-23 Political Science Spring 2022-23 Catalog Search Updating enrollment. Must the freedom or fulfillment of some people require the subordination of others? The UN Security Council, alongside national governments, decides on legitimacy and punishment. The class will be composed equally of nine Williams students and nine inmates and will be held at the jail. Jews had to decide where to pin their hopes. [more], Scandals. defeat of Nazi Germany? Is partisanship good or bad for democracy? Hamer, Shirley Chisholm, Safiya Bukhari, Erica Garner, Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, Marielle Franco, Winnie Mandela. [more], With the permission of the department, open to those senior Political Science majors who are not candidates for honors, yet who wish to complete their degree requirements by doing research--rather than taking the Senior Seminar--in their subfield of specialization. This course explores the politics and practices that arise from UNCLOS. Why is immigration policy so contentious? Specifically, the seminar will address the election of Donald Trump as president, the furor around Brexit in the United Kingdom and the authority of the European Union in Europe, and challenges to the hegemony of global finance and controversies around immigration in both the United States and Europe. Who, exactly, has been permitted to participate in American politics, and on what terms? What lessons might we derive for our own times from studying this history? At the same time that it was facing a more difficult military challenge than anticipated, the United States got bogged down in the process of nation-building, as well as efforts at social reform. Economic inequality on a level not seen in over a century. [more], From an ethical standpoint, human bodies are fundamentally different from objects that can be owned, acquired, and exchanged. In this research seminar we revisit the debate on the relationship between mineral wealth and development, focusing on the factors and conditions that lead some resource rich countries to fail and others to succeed. Riven by polarized partisanship and gridlock, the most powerful assembly in the world seemed incapable of representing citizens and addressing problems. With a theoretical grounding in the "Black radical tradition," students will leave this course with the conceptual resources and philosophical tools needed to realize political theory's potential as an instrument they can employ in their daily lives to normatively and diagnostically evaluate political, economic, cultural, and social institutions. This tutorial unsettles that framing, first by situating the black radical tradition as a species of black politics, and second through expanding the boundaries of black politics beyond the United States. Our time and Arendt's are similarly darkened by the shadows of racism, xenophobia, inequality, terror, the mass displacement of refugees, and the mass dissemination of lies. Does the concept fit well with, and reinforce, some institutions and configurations of power, and make others difficult to sustain (or even to conceive)? Which leaders developed coherent grand strategies? For whom do they function? If the welfare state has a future, it will look different from the past, but how? [more], What is the role of race in American public opinion and voting? She wrote luminously about the darkness that comes when terror extinguishes politics and the shining, almost miraculous events of freedom through which politics is sometimes renewed. and analyze the principal structural and situational constraints--both foreign and domestic--that limit leaders' freedom of action, and which they must manage effectively to achieve their diplomatic and military goals. And we will ask persistently: what constitutes a "Jewish justification" for a political claim in modern Jewish political theory? This course is part of a joint program between Williams' Center for Learning in Action and the Berkshire County Jail in Pittsfield, MA. The primary objective of the course is for students to improve dramatically their understanding of the role of leaders and strategic choice in international relations. As an experiential education course, we will (virtually) attend a US naturalization ceremony as well as interview officials from organizations working with migrants and refugees here and abroad. While America ultimately rejected the League of Nations, the Wilsonian tradition has continued to exert a powerful influence on scholars and policymakers. Are these conflicts related, and if so, how? they cannot do, and who can punish transgressions. This class investigates one of the most polarizing and relevant issues of our time: the politics of migration. This seminar engages some of the major attempts at rethinking produced in the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly at those that, characterizing liberalism as masking structures of subordination and elements of conflict in political life, undervaluing the importance of citizen action and public space, or being ill-suited to altered technological and ecological conditions, seek to rework or move beyond it. Why a two-party system, and what role do third parties play? Not surprisingly, loneliness has become epidemic. Our goal is to explain how and why welfare states vary and why there is so much inequality in the distribution of risk. Others suggest that most Americans have moved "beyond race" and that racism explains little of modern-day partisan and electoral politics. Like domestic law, it is enforced only some of the time, and then against the weak more than the strong.