DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Theory and application of linear regression and extensions such as limited dependent variables. Consequences of violating the assumptions underlying the classical linear regression model. Prerequisites: Knowledge of introductory econometrics.

This course is about linear models, the major workhorses of statistics for description and prediction - and the most common quantitative methods in political science. We will use a linear models framework to discuss significance tests, graphical displays, tests of assumptions, interpretation of coefficients and interactions, and questions of causal inference. We will also work through statistical computing skills such that students can use all of the above in their own work.

This seminar is an experiment in studying the intersections of religion, race, and global politics. We discuss how particular understandings of ‘religion’ and ‘race’ have informed contemporary scholarship and also shaped national and international legal and governmental practice. These questions are examined in contexts ranging from anti-superstition laws in Haiti, to religious aspects of the colonial encounter in the Dutch East Indies, to the celebration of “moderate” religion at the US State Department, to the politics of secularism, magic and spirituality in India and China, and beyond. Cross-cutting themes include religion and the rise of the nation-state; the politics of religious establishment and religious freedom; the role of race in the formation of the disciplines of religious studies and international relations; the formation of modern vocabularies of religious and racial exclusion; the role of race and secularism in American history at home and abroad, and the international politics of religion and race in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Readings are comprised of books and articles, including new and not yet published work, which draw on international politics, religion, political theory, law, anthropology and history.

This graduate seminar addresses some fundamental issues related to political theory and social inquiry. In particular, it addresses the political-theoretic dimensions of social inquiry—one might even say “the political philosophy of social science”—in connection with claims that criticism or critique is essential to both political theory and social inquiry.

The seminar will broach these issues and claims by attending to the changing traditions of Marxism, Pragmatism, and Critical Theory (as associated with the Frankfurt School). These traditions have complex and intersecting histories. At different times, they critique and criticize—not to mention challenge, condemn, or complement—one another in a process of mutual transformation. In different ways, they situate “critique” and “criticism” within the defining categories of science, method, and politics. It is the intent of the seminar, then, to investigate these traditions involved in mutual critique and criticism, and to take up their respective and changing understandings of “critique” and “criticism” in matters of political theory and social inquiry, as a contribution to the political philosophy of social science. As a matter or organization and presentation, the readings will unfold more or less historically, from the 1840s down to the present.

Given this broad intent, the seminar involves intellectual history, political theory, and the philosophy of science. It pretends to be no more than an advanced introduction to the issues, figures, and traditions in question. As graduate students in the seminar, you are not expected to have any special preparation, aside from a general interest in the issues at stake and some basic course work in political theory, philosophy, or the social sciences. You are also encouraged to develop paper topics that play to your own particular ongoing research agendas, the better to make the seminar serve your longer-term intellectual growth and academic interests.

This course examines the role of immigration in American politics with a focus on influential theories and evidence of the relationship between race and immigration, historically and present-day.