Focuses on methods and approaches to writing effective and persuasive argumentative essays as a core component of the study of politics. Topics vary by instructor, and consider central concepts and issues in political life. The course material is explored as a means through which to develop basic and advanced skills in writing, as well as in argumentation, analysis, and critical engagement with readings through seminar-style discussions.
Instructor
Megan Thomsa, Eaton Kent, Melanie Springer
Quarter offered
Winter, Spring
Overview of research methods and data analytic techniques used in politics. Through hands-on learning, students critically evaluate social research reports, conduct investigations, describe data, assess statistical relationships, and test hypotheses. Prepares students to conduct the in-depth research required in upper-division courses.
General Education Code
SR
Introduction to conceptualizing and executing qualitative research in the social sciences. Qualitative methods are non-statistical modes of social inquiry, including case studies, interviews, and archival research. Research methods cannot be done in a passive way. Really understanding methodology requires Doing Research.
Instructor
Sara Niedzwiecki
Situates ongoing debates around feminist theory and practice within the context of political theory, the role of the state, and the position of women in contemporary (predominantly Western) society. Engages with classical political theory, second wave feminism, and the role of the state on matters pertaining to pornography and prostitution.
Explores tensions between reason and revelation, justice and democracy, and freedom and empire through close readings of ancient texts. Emphasis on Athens, with Hebrew, Roman, and Christian departures and interventions. Includes Sophocles, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, the Bible, and Augustine.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105A
Studies republican and liberal traditions of political thought and politics. Authors studied include Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Examination of issues such as authorship, individuality, gender, state, and cultural difference.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105B
Studies in 19th- and early 20th-century theory, centering on the themes of capitalism, labor, alienation, culture, freedom, and morality. Authors studied include J. S. Mill, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, Hegel, Fanon, and Weber.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105C
Examines the condition of modernity as it is understood, dwelled upon, and critiqued by political theorists since the second half of the 20th century. Explores how the modern condition was viewed by Euro-American thinkers, who saw themselves as its originators and heirs, as well as Chinese, Indian, Arab, and African thinkers for whom European modernity was an inescapable, if not an insurmountable, imposition to be engaged, transformed, and critiqued. (Formerly Late-20th Century Political Thought.)
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105D
Instructor
Yasmeen Daifallah
Examines revolt, rebellion, and revolution as ideas in political theory, and as prisms through which we can analyze historical events. Introduces works of political theory (historical and contemporary), and looks at historical events considered to be revolts and/or revolutions.
Examines current problems in law as it intersects with politics and society. Readings are drawn from legal and political philosophy, social science, and judicial opinions.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 110
An introduction to constitutional law, emphasizing equal protection and fundamental rights as defined by common law decisions interpreting the 14th Amendment, and also exploring issues of federalism and separation of powers. Readings are primarily court decisions; special attention given to teaching how to interpret, understand, and write about common law.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 111A
Introduces the literature on the history of the body. Explores the multiple ways in which the body, in the West, has been the site of cultural and political inscription from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Topics may include: pornography, criminality, sexuality, art, race, and medicine.
A course on the political and philosophical sources of ecological and social sustainability and how they affect and inflect the design, implementation, and practices of sustainability. Asks whether they offer a realistic alternative to liberalism and other political and economic ideologies and practices.
Examines how ideas about labor, rights, exchange, capital, consumption, the state, production, poverty, luxury, morality, procreation, and markets were woven in political-economic discourse from 1690-1936. Readings include Locke, Mandeville, Smith, Malthus, Mill, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, and Veblen. Particular focus given to theoretical origins of and justifications for poverty and implications of economic interdependence for politics.
Instructor
Dean Mathiowetz
Introduction to techniques used to produce power, notably by manufacturing and distorting truth from overt propaganda to public relations or advertising. Each week will focus on one conceptual apparatus used to frame reality, its related techniques and strategies as well as its economic, social or political objectives. Frameworks will include bureaucratic rationality, totalitarian propaganda, colonial mythology, state euphemism, "democratic' story-telling, conspiracy theories, branding, and green-washing. Enrollment by permission of instructor.
Instructor
Jackie Gehring
General Education Code
IM
Course uses a multidisciplinary approach to the study of politics through significant contemporary authors and approaches in critical theory. Topics include: democracy action, violence, subjectivity, identity, power and resistance, the body, political economy, and post-colonialism. (Formerly Topics in Contemporary Political and Critical Theory.)
Study of political development, behavior, performance, and significance of central governmental institutions of the U.S. Emphasizes the historical development of each branch and their relationship to each other, including changes in relative power and constitutional responsibilities.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 120A
Examines the role of social forces in the development of the American democratic processes and in the changing relationship between citizen and state. Course materials address the ideas, the social tensions, and the economic pressures bearing on social movements, interest groups, and political parties.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 120B
Instructor
Melanie Springer
Examines the relationship between state and economy in the U.S. from the 1880s to the present, and provides a theoretical and historical introduction to the study of politics and markets. Focus is on moments of crisis and choice in U.S. political economy, with an emphasis on the rise of regulation, the development of the welfare state, and changes in employment policies.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 120C
Examines how "race" is forged as a distinctive concept and logic of governance in American Politics; Undercurrents of racial reasoning in transcendent notions of "justice" in the U.S. are traced from the nation's founding into the 21st century.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 121
General Education Code
ER
Examines political and social dimensions of recent transformations in the U.S. labor market. Includes classical and contemporary theoretical debates over the nature and functions of work under capitalism. Focuses on shifts in the organization and character of work in a globalizing economy. Addresses recent trends in low-wage and contingent work, job mobility and security, and work/family relations. Includes attention to the roles and responses of business, labor, and government.
Examines the sources and implications of economic inequality in the United States. Explores theories of social class and its intersections with race and gender inequalities. Focuses on the role of politics and public policies in diminishing and/or exacerbating income and wealth inequalities.
Introduces the literature on interest groups and attempts to answer the question: Do such groups promote or hinder American democracy? Class readings and lectures review and assess the participation of interest groups in the electoral process and in Congress, the executive branch, and the courts.
Explores several important topics in the study of parties and partisanship in American politics; for example, the development of the party system, parties as organizations, parties in government, parties in the electorate, polarization, partisan identification, and state-level variation.
Instructor
Melanie Springer
Introduces key concepts pertaining to voting, elections, and political behavior in the United States. Several topics are covered, such as campaigns, electoral institutions, reform, political participation (including but not limited to voting), presidential and congressional elections, partisan identification, and polling.
Instructor
Melanie Springer
Examines the evolution of the policy and politics of American national security, from the Cold War to the present. Content of military policy explored with analytic focus on formation of policy and interactions between military policies and domestic policies.
Explores the rich history and fundamental legal concepts surrounding water in California. Students identify, evaluate, and debate some critical water policy questions faced by Californians today and in the future.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 132
Instructor
Ruth Langridge
Examines the United States Congress and the nature of the representative and legislative processes. Topics include: districting and elections; bicameralism; party organization; institutional and behavioral influences on legislative action; and the efficacy of Congress as a legislative body. Focuses on the contemporary Congress with comparisons to other legislative and representative institutions.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 134
Course charts the history of immigration policy and debate in the U.S., highlighting the ways economic, social, and geopolitical factors influenced the processes and outcomes of immigration debate and policy making. Focuses on interaction between society and state in formulation and implementation of immigration policy, and the ways policy outcomes may differ from expectations.
Focuses on the application of theory to practice by creating an opportunity for students to explore and analyze the connections between federal, state, and local policies and their impacts on day-to-day programs in the Santa Cruz community and region.
This internship in governmental, public policy, and advocacy organizations and leaders in the Santa Cruz area requires a minimum of 50 hours with an assigned field study organization, a field journal, and limited classroom work.
General Education Code
PR-S
Explores the political and economic systems of advanced industrialized societies. In addition to specific comparisons between the countries of western Europe and the United States, covers important themes and challenges, including immigration, globalization, and the crisis of the welfare state.
Instructor
Eleonora Pasotti
Overview of major approaches to the study of Latin American politics. Introductory survey of historical and contemporary democratic populist, authoritarian, and revolutionary regimes. Special attention is given to region's recent transitions toward democratic rule, market-based economic models, and decentralized governance. Evaluates institutional arrangements (including presidentialism, electoral rules and party systems), as well as a variety of social movements and strategies of resistance among subaltern social groups and classes.
Explores the political development of East Asia's primary democracies: Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Examines the historical origins of these states, the process through which they emerged from authoritarian roots, and topics such as protest, corruption, and women's political roles.
General Education Code
CC
Introduces themes of Chinese politics from 1949 to present, including: the establishment and substantial dismantling of socialism; movements and upheavals, such as the Cultural Revolution and 1989; and issues, such as Hong Kong and Tibet. Surveys current institutions, leaders, and policies.
Historical-political survey of Russia within the U.S.S.R. is followed by examination of the 1991 revolution, the attempt to recover a national identity and establish a unified Russian state. Highlighted in this course are cultural and political factors central to the Russian experience: personalistic modes of political organization, a remote and corrupt state apparatus, collectivist forms of thought and self-defense.
Comparative study of revolutionary transformations of East European, Soviet, and former Soviet nations to post-Communist political orders. Focus on reemergence of political society, social and economic problems of transition, and maintenance of many cultural norms and authority patterns associated with previous regime.
Instructor
Roger Schoenman
Examines similar political trends in four Andean countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Trends include mobilization of indigenous populations, breakdown of traditional party systems, and reconstruction efforts in post-conflict environments. Students who have taken prior courses in Latin American politics, including
POLI 140C, will be best prepared for this course.
Comparative study of contemporary sub-Saharan African states. Selected issues and countries. Internal and external political institutions and processes are studied in order to learn about politics in contemporary Black Africa and to learn more about the nature of politics through the focus on the particular issues and questions raised by the African context.
Examines the phenomenon of territorial conflict within countries. Focuses on territorial cleavages that occur when minority groups are geographically concentrated within particular territories, and emphasizes attempts to accommodate these cleavages through measure like autonomy, federalism, and decentralization.
Overview of social movements by analysis of specific theories and examples. Course connects the study of theories and movements to larger political processes. Topics may include: New Social Movement theory; gender and social movement; democratic, historical, transnational, global and/or local social movements.
Explores democratization processes from a variety of historical and geographical perspectives. Examines the role of foreign influences, economic development, civil society, elites, and institutions in the transition and consolidation of democratic systems.
Instructor
Eleonora Pasotti
Uncovers the important debates in politics and law around the functions of courts, litigation, and rights--and the political nature of law itself. Course is interdisciplinary, and draws from literature in political science, law, and sociology.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 151
Investigates the evolution of the Arab nationalist state, from decolonization to the uprisings of 2010-2011. Examines the changes and continuities in Middle Eastern politics over the past 60 years by focusing on questions of violence, political economy, and culture.
General Education Code
CC
Provides an introduction to issues and challenges facing cities in the U.S. and abroad, as well as the policy remedies available to government and the private sector. The first part of the course provides the foundations to the study of urban politics by examining core questions in local government institutions and urban coalitions. The second part of the course examines urban policies in a variety of areas, such as growth, redevelopment, housing, and poverty.
Instructor
Eleonora Pasotti
Introduces students to the histories, societies, and politics of the Philippines. Surveys major historical eras, and treats topics such as the state, revolts and revolution, labor, religion, the environment, martial law.
General Education Code
CC
Examination of analytical perspectives on international and world politics, international and global political economy, war and conflict, corporations and civil society. Explores theoretical tools and applications, recurring patterns of global conflict and cooperation, the nexus between domestic politics, foreign policy and international and world politics. This is not a current events course.
Origins and development of international law: international law is examined both as a reflection of the present world order and as a basis for transformation. Topics include state and non-state actors and sovereignty, treaties, the use of force, and human rights.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 160B
Genesis and theories of conflict and war and their avoidance (past, present, future). Relationship between foreign policy and intra- and interstate conflict and violence. National security and the security dilemma. Non-violent conflict as a normal part of politics; violent conflict as anti-political; transformation of conflict into social and interstate violence. Interrelationships among conduct of war, attainment of political objectives, and the end of hostilities. Civil and ethnic wars. Political economy of violence and war.
Introduction to the politics of international economic relations. Examines the history of the international political economy, the theories that seek to explain it, and contemporary issues such as trade policy, globalization, and the financial crisis.
Instructor
Roger Schoenman
Explores China's rising international power and the implications thereof. Special emphasis on China's interactions with the United States and related issues (Korea, Taiwan, the South China Sea). Also addresses China's dealings with South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Japan, international organizations, and more. (Formerly Foreign Relations of China.)
Provides overview of U.S. foreign policy formulation: considers how U.S. political culture shapes foreign policy; examines governmental actors involved: the president, executive branch agencies, and Congress; then considers non-governmental actors: the media, interest groups, and public opinion.
Addresses whether and how global organizations are changing the international system. Examines multilateral institutions, regional organizations, and nonstate actors. Overriding aim is to discern whether these global organizations are affecting the purported primacy of the state.
Examines the magnitude and the political, economic, cultural, environmental, and social impact of today's movement of millions of people within and amongst states.
General Education Code
CC
Examines key issues in international trade, including the distribution of gains, fair trading practices, and preferential trade agreements. Focuses on the political dimensions of trade, the rules of the international trade system, and conflicts within countries that international trade generates.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 167
Examines contemporary issues in international relations, global politics, and global political economy through theoretical and applied frameworks, program assessment, sectoral and structure analysis, and across levels of analysis.
Introduces the politics of development. Examines the theories, history, and economics of development. Analyzes several contemporary issues. Readings include contemporary writings in the field and classical works on theoretical approaches.
Examines the relation between the liberal State and perceived challenges to State sovereignty posed by transnational terrorism. How does terrorism as both a symbol and empirical phenomenon fit within the horizon of liberal ideology? What claim to sovereignty does the State make in the face of acts of terror? What political logic is required in/for a War on Terror? Students may not take both course 72 and this course for credit in the major.
Explores the global dimensions of complex environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity, deforestation, and fisheries: how they are produced, how they manifest, and how they are governed in response.
Embraces an interdisciplinary approach to the study of human rights. Captures the malleable nature of human rights and the contours of its dual role as both law and discourse.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 175
Interrogates the presuppositions of punishment as legitimate state power. Decentering crime as punishment's conceptual predicate, wider analysis of the penal state's social-scientific, jurisprudential, and philosophical foundations force us to ask: What is punishment? Why punish? How, and whom, to punish?
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 182
General Education Code
PE-H
What defines just political rule in Islam? How do modern Muslim thinkers conceive the role of Islamic normative guidelines (Shariah) in the context of secular modern nation-states? Course surveys how major trends in modern Islamic thought try to answer this question.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 184
Instructor
Yasmeen Daifallah
Provides a broad introduction to the growing interdisciplinary field of political psychology. Focuses on and critically analyzes classic and contemporary psychological perspectives, primarily through original sources. Draws upon theoretical ideas and experimental results to understand political actors, events, and processes.
Examines the politics surrounding both global health problems and policy responses.Traces the evolving interrelationships between these problems and policies from colonial health to the impacts of austerity on postcolonial health systems to today's globally targeted responses.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 186
Examines the lessons for global and community health that are emerging from our experiences of COVID. These experiences have been characterized by vast variations in exposure and vulnerability as well as wide variations in response and resilience. All these variations teach us much about inequalities in global and community health, but they also highlight new opportunities for addressing injustice and restoring health as a shared human right. By treating the pandemic this way as portal for the re-imagination and remaking of global and community health, the course focuses on moving systematically from evidence about disease, its inequalities, and policy responses to ideas about improving health outcomes both locally and globally.
General Education Code
PE-H
Quarter offered
Fall, Spring, Summer
Examines how enmity, the state, and war serve as limits for political conceptions of who we are, tensions between commitments to diversity and to peace, and liberal and humanitarian efforts to address these tensions. Students examine works written prior to the liberal period (Hobbes), in response to it (Hegel and Schmitt) and finally a 20th-century liberal revival (Rawls), and discuss rights, conscience, political obligation, war, and the state.
Instructor
Yasmeen Daifallah
How do postcolonial thinkers conceive of freedom and equality in the wake of a colonialism that irreversibly reshaped their modes of life? Course closely reads central works of postcolonial theory to examine how they address this question. (Formerly Humanitarian Action in World Politics.)
Studies in 19th- and early 20th-century anarchist and socialist thought. Themes covered include property, labor, marriage, and the state. Readings drawn from Bakunin, Goldman, Fourier, Kropotkin, Perkins-Gilman, Proudhon, and Stirner.
Explores the role of new media in political protest; whether and how new media technologies such as social networking, text messaging, Twitter, and YouTube have changed the way opposition movements develop.
Instructor
Roger Schoenman
Cities are at the frontlines of complex global issues including climate change, international terrorism, and transnational migration. Course situates cities in the dynamics of world politics, and explores the possibilities and prospects of global urban/urban global governance in the 21st Century.
Explores theory and reality of international law; how it determines or governs or modifies policies of government. Emphasis on contemporary political and economic forces and international law in nuclear age, competing areas for new law, law of seas, human rights, new international economic issues, the environment.
What is democracy? How can we identify it? How do we understand and identify political participation? What are the factors behind it? What role does protest have in democratic politics? These and similar questions are addressed in this course that focuses on topics of democratic politics in the United States and abroad.
Instructor
Eleonora Pasotti
Considers causes and consequences of inequality in modern societies. Emphasizes empirical analysis of contemporary forms of class, racial, and gender inequality and examination of normative theories of distributive justice. Major restrictions lifted during open enrollment.
Examines theoretical, historical, and contemporary sources of poverty policies in the United States. Explores competing theories of the causes of poverty and the consequences of social provision. Focuses on successive historical reform efforts and contemporary dilemmas of race and urban poverty, gender and family poverty, work, and the politics of welfare reform.
State governments affect the lives of Americans every day. This course examines an array of issues pertaining to state politics, such as the foundations of American federalism, institutional organization, elections, political parties, direct democracy, and policy-making.
Instructor
Melanie Springer
Examines problems and potential solutions to issues in U.S. politics, such as presidential power, partisan polarization, money in elections, foreign and security policy, civil rights and liberties, and taxation and spending.
Explores how civic groups and social movements have confronted and shaped constitutional rights, equality, and power. Examines a range of U.S. movements from the 18th Century to the 21st Century-era of Marriage Equality, Tea Party, and Dreamer movements. (Formerly Constitutional Meanings and Movements: Exploring the Ideas, Laws, and Politics in Social Change.)
Instructor
Katharine Beaumont
Examines how we came, by the late 19th century, to classify humanity into racial categories. In an effort to trace emergence of this very modern phenomenon, explores historical shifts that informed Europe's representation of cultural difference from the writings of ancient Greeks to the social Darwinism of 19th-century Britain.
Introduces central categories and material implications that underwrite discourses on modernity since the late 18th century. Students read across the disciplines in fields such as political theory, postcolonialism, history, science studies, anthropology, and feminist criticism.
Interdisciplinary investigation into functions of law across political, historical, and cultural contexts. Examines the international and comparative turn in public law scholarship and the role of law-based strategies in state building. Reviews literature in law, political science and legal anthropology.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 190R
Students read recent books on East Asian countries that engage the long-standing themes of state power and societal resistance.
Focuses on the causes and consequences of state capacity in the global south, asking why states are much stronger in some countries than others and how their relative strength affects important substantive outcomes, including democracy, development, and security. (Formerly Problems in Latin American Politics.)
Examines how Latin American governments function and what major challenges countries in the region are facing. Focuses on democracy, economic development, gender and indigenous politics, social policies, poverty, and inequality.
Instructor
Sara Niedzwiecki
Examination of selected issues, controversies, and theories relevant to security between and among nations. Topics vary, but may include: war, peace, nuclear proliferation, arms control, military and foreign policies, alternative conceptions of security.
Individual studies undertaken off campus with direct faculty supervision. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Provides a means for a small group of students to study a particular topic in consultation with a faculty sponsor. Various topics to be announced before each quarter. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Provides a means for a small group of students to study a particular topic in consultation with a faculty sponsor. Various topics to be announced before each quarter. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Preparation of a senior thesis over two or three quarters, beginning in any quarter. The grade and evaluation submitted for the final quarter apply to each of the previous quarters. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Preparation of a senior thesis over two or three quarters, beginning in any quarter. The grade and evaluation submitted for the final quarter apply to each of the previous quarters. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Preparation of a senior thesis over two or three quarters, beginning in any quarter. The grade and evaluation submitted for the final quarter apply to each of the previous quarters. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Individual studies undertaken off-campus for which faculty supervision is not in person (e.g. supervision is by correspondence). Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Individual studies undertaken off-campus for which faculty supervision is not in person, but by correspondence. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
A student normally approaches a member of the staff and proposes to take a POLI 199 on a subject he or she has chosen which is not offered in other politics courses. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
A student normally approaches a member of the faculty and proposes to take a POLI 199 on a subject he or she has chosen which is not offered in other politics courses. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
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
Explores the relationship between international trade and environmental protection. Centrally, we will consider the question: are trade liberalization and environment protection antithetical or conducive? We will use the theoretical literature on regime overlap to help us better consider this question.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 162
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
Explores the status of American civil liberties as provided by the Bill of Rights. Particular attention will be given to issues of concern relating to the aftermath of 9/11, including issues relating to detainees, freedom of information requests, wiretapping authority, watch lists, profiling, and creation of a domestic intelligence agency.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 111B
Explores how countries organize their societies through legal rules. Particular attention is given to constitutional design, differences between common and civil law systems, changes brought about by the European Union, and the convergence of legal norms globally.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 116
Instructor
Jacqueline Gehring
General Education Code
CC
Quarter offered
Winter, Summer
Explores the role of law in both enabling and constraining the actions of elected politicians in the U.S. Among issues examined are voting rights, redistricting, and campaign finance. Course asks how the law shapes and limits our ability to choose our elected leaders, and in turn, how the law is shaped by political forces.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 133
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
General Education Code
PE-H