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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the phenomenon of political Islam in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It examines the reasons, implications, and consequences of the reassertion of Islam in today's politics. The first part of the course provides a thorough analysis of the Islamic order and the model(s) that inspires modern Islamist activists. The second part critically examines the ideas of the main ideologues of contemporary Islamic movements. The third part discusses the approaches to the understanding of contemporary political Islam and the Islamic movements and presents cases studies of mainstream and radical Islamic movements in a number of Arab and Muslim countries. Finally, the course concludes with a critical analysis of the future of political Islam and its relations with the West.
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3.00 Credits
This course poses three questions in the study of politics: (1) Why are some countries democratic and others authoritarian? (2) In what ways do democratic regimes vary from one another? (3) What constitutes "good" government? In answering these questions, we study two different types of mobilization (nationalist and developmental) and four countries: the United States, Russia, China, and Great Britain. This course cannot be taken if you have already taken POLS 20400 .
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3.00 Credits
Political Psychology is a multidisciplinary field of study concerned with how psychological processes are influenced by and inform political behavior of individual citizens, groups, political leaders, and behavior within political institutions. This class explores some of the major lines of political psychology theory and research, and their application to political life. These applications include the role of personality in the formation of political attitudes and democratic values; racism, stereotyping, ethnocentrism, and nationalism; the influences of emotion and cognition on voting decisions; social identity theory; information processing and political decision making; inter-group conflict; political intolerance; and methodological approaches in political psychology. This course will attempt to answer the following questions: What is racism and where does it come from? Is political intolerance an automatic response to objective stimuli or is intolerance functional? To what extent are political attitudes and values ingrained in personality? Is the support for democracy, political trust, and support for the political system linked to personality? How do individuals utilize and process information in political campaigns? Is negative campaigning effective? How did a heightened sense of fear and anxiety, following the September 11 terrorist attacks on America, influence political decisions, the support for President Bush's policies, and intolerance toward social groups? How does social group identity form? Does linking or identifying with one group leads to the rejection of other groups? What motivates George Bush? To what extent are personality theories useful in explaining the behavior of presidents and other political leaders? What are the political psychological underpinnings of inter-group conflict, mass violence, and genocide? Is the truth and reconciliation movement an effective means of recovering from genocide and violence?
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3.00 Credits
This course is intended to introduce students to the social problems connected with the death of city centers in the US by examining the city of South Bend and the recent efforts by its mayor and city council to restore the city. Students will examine transportation, jobs, housing and access to culture. The class will conduct field studies of the South Bend city center to determine how well these needs are currently being met.
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3.00 Credits
The impact of religion on social and political change and the impact of social and political change on the influence of religion are immensely important topics. While many have claimed that religious faith communities essentially impede "human progress", others have argued that "human progress" is impossible to explain without some reference to such faith communities. In this seminar, we will take a critical look at religion, particularly Christianity and Islam, and examine two major questions: (1)What effects, if any, do religious beliefs and institutions have on human development and the prospects for and the quality of democracy? (2) What effects, if any, do human development and democratization have on the relevance of religious beliefs and the influence of religious institutions?
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3.00 Credits
This course analyzes prominent resistance movements in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We first examine the conceptual tools of contentious politics, domination and resistance, state-society relations, and violent vs. nonviolent strategies of resistance. We then examine various nationalist independence movements, revolutionary movements, communist insurgencies, civil wars, and peaceful democracy movements. To better understand resistance movements from the perspectives of leaders and participants, we will watch a series of documentaries and read the (auto-) biographies of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama, Wei Jingshen, and others. In analyzing democracy movements, we will further examine what the third wave of democracy entails, why some movements succeed while others fail, how new democracies should reconcile with past dictators, to what extent constitutional engineering can solve past problems and facilitate successful transitions, and why some new democracies remain fragile.
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3.00 Credits
This course on international development has three major purposes: I) to examine diverse approaches to thinking about international development and processes that bring about individual and societal change, II) to explore the role and constraints of development projects in areas such as poverty reduction, social development, health, education, the environment, and emergency relief, and III) to develop practical skills related to project planning and management, negotiations, communications, and the evaluation of international development projects. This class aspires to develop relevant knowledge and practical skill for students interested in engaging in bringing about positive change in a complex world. The class is particularly relevant for students planning international summer service internships, studying abroad, or for those considering careers in areas related to social and economic development. The course will make use of specific case studies from Haiti, Peru, Uganda, Mexico, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Chile, among others, drawing lessons from instructive stories of failure and inspirational stories of change.
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3.00 Credits
This course will focus on the initiatives launched to foster development in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua). What has been tried and what is the situation today? What are the constraints to social and economic development in those regions? What is being proposed now? We will focus on the current thinking on development and how the different countries in the regions have responded to it.
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3.00 Credits
This course deals with human evolution in both biological and cultural terms. Topics covered will include primate behavior, the mechanisms of evolution, the fossil record, and the characteristics of prehistoric cultures.
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3.00 Credits
Issues concerning the nature of human diversity (race, intelligence, sex, gender, etc.) are a continuing source of social and scientific debate. This course is designed to present the issues and methods used by physical anthropologists to study both the biological basis of human differences, as well as the ongoing process of human adaptation and evolution in response to climate, nutrition, and disease. Integration of the social, biological, and medical sciences will be employed to investigate modern human variation.
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