What is the relationship between sex and the state? When--and to what ends--does the state regulate sexuality and gender? In this course, students will explore feminist, trans, and queer critiques of the state and consider how those critiques align or misalign with white supremacist, abolitionist, and anti-capitalist critiques of the state. Together, we will learn about U.S. values, laws, economic relations, and technologies, and we will ask how, both historically and currently, the regulation of sex (both as sexuality and as biological sex) is used to preserve the power of the U.S.

The course examines the constitutional law of U.S. national security policy. It explores classic constitutional issues, such as separation of powers, war powers of the President and Congress, intelligence operations, and treaty-making, as well as contemporary policy issues, such as domestic wiretapping, and the internment and trial of suspected terrorists.

This course examines the current relationship between the United States and Canada. After a brief overview of U.S. and Canadian political institutions, and initial efforts to distinguish American and Canadian political culture, this course then focuses on contemporary issues in the complex political, economic and social relationship between the two states.

This course examines the challenges to democracy, the sources of populism, and the nature and practices of illiberal politics. We will explore non-democratic and illiberal forms of rule, analyzing the evolution, endurance, and transformation of authoritarianism worldwide. The course considers ideological, institutional, and international influences, drawing from historical and contemporary cases. In addition to understanding authoritarianism, we will investigate how populism and illiberalism shape democratic governance, assessing their role in democratic erosion and resilience.

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of research about public opinion. Students learn about the creation and manipulation of public opinion, its measurement and study, and the implications of findings for the practice of democratic republicanism in the U.S. and abroad. Instruction includes projects in survey research and content analysis, so that students master the techniques of public opinion research as well as the theories.

This course focuses on social welfare policy in the United States. The first section of the course explores ideological debates over the welfare state, theories of welfare state development, and the historical development of the U.S. welfare state in comparative perspective. The middle section of the course explores arguments about challenges to political order created by market dynamics, the question of American exceptionalism, and the intersections of race, gender, and welfare in American political development.

There is widespread pessimism about the performance of American national government over the last 35 years. This course examines this gloomy conventional wisdom, exploring its analytical and ideological roots and its critique of American political institutions and public policy. The class then interrogates it, first by examining contrary arguments and evidence and then in a series of student-led case studies of government performance in specific policy areas. Students produce major term papers that assess the successes and failures of some public policy.

In a government based on "consent of the governed," elections are fundamental. They provide citizens with the opportunity to choose their leaders, and in the process pass judgment on the past performance of officials and broadly indicate the direction they want government to take in the future. This course approaches the study of parties, elections, and campaigns through the lens of presidential and congressional elections, focusing on the purpose, process, and problems of electing our nation's leaders.

The course focuses on the historical development of the legislative and executive branches, focusing on the interactions between Congress and presidents in policy making process. Some offerings of the course focus heavily on the presidency, and others are more focused on Congress; recent offerings have used a single presidency as a long case study of problems in presidential leadership and the workings of the legislative and executive branches. Prospective students may wish to consult the instructor.

This course focuses on the US presidency. In the first part of the course students read two great books on the presidency and the American political system, Richard Neustadt's "Presidential Power" and Stephen Skowronek's "The Politics Presidents Make" as tools for understanding the evolution of the presidency as an institution and its relationship to the larger constitutional system.