This First-Year Writing Seminar is devoted to the study of political power and the interaction of citizens and governments and provides the opportunity to write extensively about these issues. Topics vary by term.

Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG)

Full details for GOVT 1101 - FWS: Power and Politics

This course will introduce students to comparative politics—the study of the political institutions, identities, and organized interests in countries around the world. Emphasis is on how to make meaningful comparisons between systems in different countries. Towards that goal, we will be looking at a dozen countries with different histories, political systems, and from various regions around the world. We will also use a comparative framework to use our knowledge of these (and other) countries to examine questions about democracies and democratization, electoral systems and political parties, authoritarian regimes, political mobilization and change, economic development and globalization, nationalism and identity politics, among other topics. The meta theme of this course is the comparative method as a unique way of leveraging our understanding about social and political phenomena.

Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS, SSC-AS) (CA-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 1313 - Introduction to Comparative Government and Politics

At the inception of this department at Cornell University in 1969, the Africana Studies and Research Center became the birthplace of the field "Africana studies." Africana studies emphasizes comparative and interdisciplinary studies of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and other diasporas. In this course, we will look at the diverse contours of the discipline. We will explore contexts ranging from modernity and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and plantation complex in the New World to processes of decolonization and globalization in the contemporary digital age. This course offers an introduction to the study of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and other diasporas. This course will examine, through a range of disciplines, among them literature, history, politics, philosophy, the themes - including race/racism, the Middle Passage, sexuality, colonialism, and culture - that have dominated Africana Studies since its inception in the late-1960s. We will explore these issues in an attempt to understand how black lives have been shaped in a historical sense; and, of course, the effects of these issues in the contemporary moment. This course seeks to introduce these themes, investigate through one or more of the disciplines relevant to the question, and provide a broad understanding of the themes so as to enable the kind of intellectual reflection critical to Africana Studies.

Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS, SSC-AS) (CA-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 1503 - Introduction to Africana Studies

America is finishing up two wars, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. They have been the longest wars in American history and have ended amid much ambivalence about the US engagement in each place and the results. They are part of a series of wars that America has fought as a global power, with a global reach, sending its forces thousands of miles from home. That global reach is not new, and goes back all the way to 1898 and the Spanish-American War. This course will look at the American military experience from our first tentative steps onto the global stage in 1898, to the earth-spanning conflicts of World War I and II, to the nuclear tension of Cold War conflicts, and finish with the current Long War against terrorism, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 1571 - American Defense Policy and Military History from the Two World Wars to the Global War on Terror

In 1868, samurai revolutionaries and their allies seized the reins of power and established a new capital they called Tokyo. Against all odds, this fragile regime survived and made Tokyo a center of power that would transform both Japan and the world. This survey of Japanese history explores the rise and fall of Japan as a modern imperial power; its foreign relations; its economic and scientific development from "feudalism" to futuristic technologies; and Japan's many modern revolutions, from the rule of the samurai to Westernization and democracy, from democratic collapse to fascism and World War II, and from Japan's postwar rebirth to the present. We will examine not only big events but also everyday life, including gender and sexuality, family and schools, and art and popular culture.

Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 1623 - From Samurai to Superpower: Japan in World History II

How are migration dynamics produced? How do states and communities respond to and shape complex migration processes? This course will draw on the United States as a case study, focusing on Latino immigrants. Latinos are by far the largest immigrant group in the U.S., representing about 50% of all immigrants. Additionally, the U.S. has historically received the largest number of immigrants in the world. The class will examine the main debates around migration in fields such as Latino studies, migration studies, and political science. We begin with a historical and contemporary survey of global and regional migration trends. Next, we will review theories explaining why people migrate and how countries manage migration processes. We then focus on the U.S. immigration apparatus, examining past and present changes, including migration public policies. Central to this class is the exploration of multiple systems of marginalization that shape the opportunities, material conditions, and lived experiences of immigrants in the U.S. We conclude with an exploration of historical and contemporary migrant-led forms of resistance, such as the Immigrant Rights Movement, and its linkages to other transnational struggles for social justice.

Catalog Distribution: (SCD-AS) (D-AG)

Full details for GOVT 2152 - (Im)migration and (Im)migrants: Then and Now

This course provides an overview of public opinion in the United States. We will learn how opinions affect and are affected by politics. This course is divided into two sections where we will answer two questions. First, what is public opinion and how is it reported in the news? Students will learn how the design and implementation of surveys affects survey outcomes, and why this means we sometimes see different statistics about the public's opinion across news sources. Second, what shapes public opinion? In the second half of the course, we will turn to the different political and personal forces that shape how the public thinks about different issues. For example, how do our friends, family, and elected officials change how we think about current events?

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 2162 - US Public Opinion

This overview course will take a thematic and interdisciplinary approach to major questions of our time, including health, development, migrations, security, technology, inequality, and innovation. We will explore issues that span international borders, and yet observe variation in unique places, contexts, and time periods.  The course endeavors to prepare students for the world through cultivating knowledge of different cultures, and deepening understanding of global affairs through innovative research.  We will think comparatively across major world regions, and work on issues that integrate specific regions within the larger international community. By applying multi-disciplinary knowledge from the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, students will better understand the character of world regions, their respective trajectories, and the way those trajectories fit within the larger context of globalization.

Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS) (CA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 2274 - Global Studies Gateway

Even through different countries may adopt similar economic strategies, their industrial relations system are generally quite unique, based on the particular institutional histories in each nation. This course is focused on understanding industrial relations systems around the world. Structured on a regional basis (Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, and Asia), students will appreciate the similarities and differences in industrial relations within each region, and in particular the impact of the design of each national industrial relations system on outcomes for workers, employers, and national governments.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 2303 - Introduction to International and Comparative Labor

This course explores trends in democracy around the world as both a product of public policy (which policies support and bolster democratic transitions and endurance), and as a factor that shapes representation, public policy and governance outcomes. How citizen interests translate into public policy outcomes is a key question of democratic practice. The course will identify variation across the world and use empirical analysis to identify patterns. It provides an opportunity to investigate the complex ways that regime politics (whether democratic or autocratic), public policies, and social inequalities shape one another.

Full details for GOVT 2323 - Global Democracy and Public Policy

This course will examine key issues in social and political philosophy. Topics may include the legitimacy of the state, political obligation, the nature and demands of justice, equality, liberty, and autonomy. Selected readings may be drawn from historical as well as contemporary sources.

Catalog Distribution: (ETM-AS) (KCM-AG)

Full details for GOVT 2605 - Social and Political Philosophy

Is Afghanistan part of Central Asia, South Asia, or the Middle East? Is it truly the 'graveyard of empires'? Why are great powers so interested in intervening in this country? Why did Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States fail to maintain their presence there? How does Afghan society and politics function? In this course, students will have the opportunity to explore answers to these and other questions.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS)

Full details for GOVT 2847 - Political History of Modern Afghanistan

This seminar, using faculty-directed research projects, is intended to survey China's transformation through revolution and reform since 1949, and to examine major issues under the themes of modernity and sustainability in the reform era.

Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS, HST-AS)

Full details for GOVT 3007 - China in Transition

This course, offered by faculty members of Peking University's School of International Studies, provides Chinese perspectives on contemporary China's international relations.

Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS) (CA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3017 - Chinese Perspectives on International and Global Affairs

The course examines the historical political landscape of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States and the interplay between tribal interests, politics, and the federal government. The course also looks at contemporary Native issues, federal policy and programs, tribal governance, relations between Tribal Nations and states and between Tribal Nations and the federal government. Finally, the course will explore Indigenous pop-culture and its influence on federal policy.

Catalog Distribution: (SCD-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3051 - Being Native in the 21st Century: American Indian and Alaska Native Politics, History, and Policy

This course will introduce students to the law and practice of international human rights. Students will think critically about the effectiveness of the international human rights system by examining its successes, failures, and dilemmas in preventing and responding to human rights abuse. Topics covered include the origins of international human rights; the role of international, regional, and domestic institutions and actors in enforcing human rights; critiques of the human rights movement; challenges encountered in human rights advocacy; and the relationship of the United States to the international system for the protection of human rights. The course will also explore issues such as the immigration, the death penalty, gender justice, climate change, global poverty, racism and xenophobia, and responses to mass atrocities. Throughout this interactive course, students will have frequent opportunities to step into the shoes of a human rights advocate and work individually and with their classmates to address simulated human rights problems.

Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS) (CA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3087 - International Human Rights Law and Advocacy

This course reviews the changing relations between science, technology, and the state in America, focusing on the period from 1960 to the present. We will explore science-intensive policy controversies. We will also look at how science and technology are used in different institutional settings, such as Congress, the court system, and regulatory agencies. Among other issues, we will examine the tension between the concept of science as an autonomous system for producing knowledge and the concept of science as entangled with interest groups.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3091 - Science in American Politics

The course will be a lecture course on Congress, introducing them to the political science literature on the topic and the major research questions and approaches. We will examine the development of the institution, including formal theories for congressional organization as well as historically and politically oriented accounts of rule changes, committee power, and party influence. We will also look at the determinants of legislative productivity and gridlock, approaches to measuring and analyzing congressional behavior, the changing role of the electoral connection, and the causes and consequences of polarization.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3112 - Congress and the Legislative Process

A general-education course to acquaint students with how our legal system pursues the goals of society. The course introduces students to various perspectives on the nature of law, what functions it ought to serve in society, and what it can and cannot accomplish. The course proceeds in the belief that such matters constitute a valuable and necessary part of a general education, not only for pre-law students but especially for students in other fields. Assigned readings comprise legal materials and also secondary sources on the legal process and the role of law in society. The classes include discussion and debate about current legal and social issues, including equality, safety, the environment, punishment, and autonomy.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3131 - The Nature, Functions, and Limits of Law

This class will examine historical and contemporary developments in the politics of resistance, solidarity, and inclusionary policies around migration. We will place a special focus on North and Central America to understand the emergence and development of both the Old and the New Sanctuary Movements, broadly defined, as a transnational and diverse coalition of religious and political groups such as churches, synagogues, NGOs, educational institutions, and pro-migrant states and cities that offer "safe haven" or "sanctuary" to migrants holding various legal statuses. In addition, we will examine the origins, development, and current state of subnational pro-migrant public policies in the region. We will close the class with reflections on what a world without borders could look like. This course draws on a range of interdisciplinary theories and methods from the social sciences and humanities that will allow students to analyze, imagine, and devise creative ways of inclusion toward migrants and marginalized populations.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3132 - Sanctuary in the Americas: Envisioning a Borderless World

This comparative course explores key approaches to understanding nationalism and how it interacts with questions of identity in contemporary societies. We will first consider different theoretical approaches to the historical emergence and contemporary relevance of nationalism and concepts used to analyze its different manifestations. In the second part of the course, we will focus on the Russian Federation and the US as case studies to explore the interplay of nationalism, identity and social change in ethnically and racially diverse contexts. In this part of the course, we will use a wide range of sources to consider the impact of nationalism on politics, media, culture and everyday life.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3174 - Nationalism and Identity

The "school-to-prison track" refers to policies and practices that facilitate the transfer of students out of the school system and into the prison system (including juvenile detention, county jail, immigration detention centers, or adult prison). This course takes a critical analytical look at the intersections of the prisons and schooling, emphasizing pedagogy, history and policy.

Catalog Distribution: (CA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3242 - Reflecting on the Intersections of Education and Prison Systems

In this course, we will examine one of the most important documents in American history – our Constitution.  Course topics will include the historical background of the document from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.  We will look at the creation of the Constitution, including the conflict between strong supporters of this proposed new Constitution (Federalists) and their opponents (Anti-Federalists). How did the Founders resolve their differences and what led the States to adopt a document limiting and balancing the powers of the President, Congress, and the Judiciary? We shall look at the constant tension (from the beginning to the present) over the balance of power between the three co-equal branches.  We shall discuss the role of the Constitution from both empirical and theoretical perspectives and look at how it has evolved from 1788 to the present day. Special attention will be paid to the use of Amendments, particularly the Bill of Rights, to address events/circumstances unforeseen by the drafters.  Finally, the course will discuss critical cases where the Supreme Court defined and redefined what the Constitution meant.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (HA-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3271 - Constitutional Law: An Introduction

Why do some countries offer universal health care coverage, free higher education, or personal financial security, while others do not?  What explains the alternative national approaches to similar global challenges, such as those posed by climate change, the gig economy, or migration? This course explores how the public policy strategies adopted in the United States compare to those adopted in other affluent democracies – through the lens of socio-economic inequality. Examining how different countries confront the same issue allows us to identify the policies that redress it, how their content can vary, and why so. The course therefore underscores the reason for these differences: politics and government. Together, we will examine the multiple political pathways to creating public policy across these societies, as well as their effects on the people that live in them.

Catalog Distribution: (SCD-AS) (D-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3583 - Comparative Public Policy: Political Pathways to Equality

This courses re-traces modern political thought through four concepts that characterize its emergence: nature, freedom, rights, and revolution. This course engages these concepts through texts across several genres, primarily those produced in the Italian city-states, Britain, France, and Germany. Beginning with Niccolò Machiavelli, we will first consider what exactly participants in "modernity" understood themselves to be doing. Next, alongside the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, we will explore how these ideas about modernity inflect their understanding of nature and ground their understandings of political freedom. Then, we will engage with these insights in tandem with conflicts over notions of the citizen as a rights-bearing figure in the years of the American and French Revolutions through the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, and Edmund Burke. We will conclude by examining the legacy of revolution in modern political thinking in the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS)

Full details for GOVT 3596 - Politics of Modernity

This seminar overviews political theories of colonialism and empire, and in doing so, allows us to pose questions about the constitutive elements of our modernity, such as slavery, racism, dependency, and dispossession.  Throughout the semester, we will examine the relationship between former colonies and political and economic configurations (nationalism, internationalism, capitalism, socialism), as well as philosophical and epistemological questions about the relationship between the universal and the particular, and the imperatives of history-writing.  The course material will give us an opportunity to conclude with questions about whether or not the process of decolonizing our world and our study of it is complete or an ongoing project.

Catalog Distribution: (HST-AS) (HA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3715 - Colonialism and Anticolonialism

Do alliances deter conflict or encourage them? Does nuclear proliferation create instability or paradoxically improve peace between parties? Do international organizations – such as the International Court of Justice – actually prevent human rights abuses? These questions are all subject to some controversy in the field of security studies, with competing theories and evidence on both sides of the equation. This course is dedicated to evaluating both sides of a different critical debate in security studies every week, evaluating the theories and evidence each side brings to the table. In doing so, the class with both survey some of the key areas of active research in the security field, but will also facilitate students argumentative writing, analytical evaluation, and data literacy skills.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS)

Full details for GOVT 3777 - Controversies in Security Studies

This course is dedicated to surveying and critically evaluating the theoretical models and decisions that seek to explain American foreign policy with an emphasis on the post-WWII period. We will cover the different foreign policy decision-making models and prominent issues in foreign policy such as grand strategy, Congress, the presidency, and public support.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS)

Full details for GOVT 3857 - American Foreign Policy

This course is an introduction to the scientific study of international security with a focus on the causes of war between states, the causes of civil wars, and other forms of violence such as terrorism, piracy, and transnational crime. By surveying the theoretical foundations, historical case studies, correlates, and scholarly findings of why various international conflicts exists, we will investigate the central puzzle of war, that it is costly, but nevertheless recurs. The class is divided into three sections: theoretical explanations, conflict processes, and explaining peace.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS)

Full details for GOVT 3867 - International Security and the Causes of War

China is often thought of as being isolated from the outside world. It is imagined as existing in historic seclusion, and, following the establishment of the People's Republic, as pursuing a path of autarky. Such separation has then only been somewhat modified by the set of economic reforms that Deng Xiaoping first instituted in the late 1970s. In this lecture we will seek to turn such conventional wisdom on its head through examining "what China is" via a consideration of transnational currents within the country's development. However, the course's primary focus will not be upon the past, but rather the present and attempting to determine just where the point of intersection between China and the rest of the world is. Coming to terms with such an issue will provide those who enroll in the class with a deeper, more nuanced, understanding of China's rise and this trend's implications for the rest of the world. We will accomplish this task through a combination of surveying the existing literature on China and transnational politics, and considering new theoretical perspectives on both.  

Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS, SSC-AS) (CA-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 3967 - What is China?

Major seminars in the Government department are small, advanced courses that cover an important theme or topic in contemporary politics in depth. Courses place particular emphasis on careful reading and classroom discussion, and students can expect to write a significant research paper. These courses are open to all Cornell students, but preference in admissions is given to seniors over juniors, and to Government majors over other students. Topics vary by semester and section. Fall 2024 Topics include: Empire and Black Radical Political Thought; Empire and (Anti)Colonial Violence; Feminisms: Simone de Beauvoir as Political Thinker; Pirates, Sailors, and Terrorists; Climate Change and International Security; Inequality and the Welfare State; Russian Politics. Spring 2025 Topics include: Equality; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Politics of Public Policy.

Full details for GOVT 4000 - Major Seminar

American conservative thought rests on assumptions that are strikingly different from those made by mainstream American liberals.  However, conservative thinkers are themselves committed to principles that are both quite varied and sometimes contradictory.  This course examines the assumptions upon which rest the libertarian, market/economic, and cultural/traditional strains of American conservatism and asks whether the tensions between them weaken or strengthen conservative thought as an alternative to mainstream liberalism.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 4021 - American Conservative Thought

This course serves as a survey of major issues within Chinese politics and foreign policy and constitutes the capstone seminar for CAPS students. It is intended to give students an opportunity to explore aspects related to Chinese politics, economics, and society that they may have touched upon in other China-focused courses at Cornell, but have not been able to examine as fully, and with the degree of care, that they would like. In this regard, the substance of the course will be developed through an iterative process between the instructor and the seminar participants. We will spend the first part of the course doing a series of recent influential readings on contemporary China and developing initial research projects. The second half of the class will be organized around student led presentations of research projects (accompanied by relevant academic, media, and policy readings).

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, GLC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 4037 - Making Sense of China: The Capstone Seminar

This seminar will explore some of the most important psychoanalytic approaches to politics and collective life. from Sigmund Freud's Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego to works by Le Bon, Reich, Althusser, Fanon, Lacan, Safouan, Zizek and Dolar. Questions explored will include the relationship between mass and individual psychology; the role of unconscious identification (ideal ego, superego) in group formation, nationalism, xenophobia and racism; fantasy and politics; and the people considered as a subject and political actor. Events and contexts discussed will range from the French Revolution to the Nazi Reich to colonialization and contemporary authoritarianisms. Works of political theory by Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Arendt, Balibar and Ranciere will be put in dialogue with psychoanalytic readings.

Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS) (CA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 4246 - Psychoanalysis and Politics

GOVT 4959 is the second semester of honors thesis research, limited to students who have completed GOVT 4949 - Honors Seminar: Thesis Clarification and Research. There is no formal class meeting. Instead, students will work on their own, with their advisers and other faculty they may consult. Following the plan developed in the fall semester, they will proceed to gather and analyze data or texts, turning in thesis chapters to the adviser on a regular schedule that the student and adviser develop.

Full details for GOVT 4959 - Honors Thesis: Research and Writing

The core course at Cornell in Washington is an engaged learning class that focuses on understanding and analyzing the professional experience of being in DC. Its primary purpose is to give students a chance to sunthesize the lessons of their internship work by examining and reflecting on that work, investigating the context and structures of the policy and political world with which they are engaging, and learning and practicing the professional forms of writing that the community uses. This process occurs through readings, written assignments, guest speakers, and signature events. An internship is required for the class.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for GOVT 4998 - Engaged Learning About Policy Making in Washington D.C.

One-on-one tutorial arranged by the student with a faculty member of his or her choosing. Open to government majors doing superior work, and it is the responsibility of the student to establish the research proposal and to find a faculty sponsor. Applicants for independent study must present a well-defined program of study that cannot be satisfied by pursuing courses in the regularly scheduled curriculum. No more than 4 credits of independent study may count toward fulfillment of the major. Students who elect to continue taking this course for more than one semester must select a new theme or subject each semester. Credit can be given only for work that results in a satisfactory amount of writing. Emphasis is on the capacity to subject a body of related readings to analysis and criticism. Keep in mind that independent study cannot be used to fulfill the seminar requirement. The application form for independent study must be completed at the beginning of the semester in which the course is being taken.

Full details for GOVT 4999 - Undergraduate Independent Study

Contemporary politics raise profound questions about the American past and how aspects of it have traveled across time and into the present, shaping US government and politics. This PhD-level seminar uses historical and institutional lenses to examine analytical questions about the origins and development of the American state as well as processes of political change. In Spring 2021, we will explore American political development with an eye toward understanding how threats to democracy have waxed and waned and combined over time, and the implications for the present. We will focus on topics such as political parties and polarization; conflict over belongs, with respect to race and gender; economic inequality; and executive aggrandizement. We will read some classic texts as well as new and recent ones. 

Full details for GOVT 6011 - The American State

This course builds upon 6019, covering in detail the interpretation and estimation of multivariate linear regression models. We derive the Ordinary Least Squares estimator and its characteristics using matrix algebra and determine the conditions under which it achieves statistical optimality. We then consider the circumstances in social scientific contexts which commonly lead to assumption violations, and the detection and implications of these problems. This leads to modified regression estimators that can offer limited forms of robustness in some of these cases. Finally, we briefly introduce likelihood-based techniques that incorporate assumptions about the distribution of the response variable, focusing on logistic regression for binary dependent variables. Students are expected to produce a research paper built around a quantitative analysis that is suitable for presentation at a professional conference. Some time will be spent reviewing matrix algebra, and discussing ways to implement computations using statistical software.

Full details for GOVT 6029 - Advanced Regression Analysis

The major issues, approaches, and institutions of American government and the various subfields of American politics are introduced. The focus is on both substantive information and theoretical analysis, plus identification of big questions that have animated the field.

Full details for GOVT 6031 - Field Seminar in American Politics

What can lawyers and judges learn from the study of literature? This course explores the relevance of imaginative literature (novels, drama, poetry, and film) to questions of law and social justice from a range of perspectives. We will consider debates about how literature can help to humanize legal decision-making; how storytelling has helped to give voice to oppressed populations over history; how narratives of suffering cultivate popular support for human rights; the role played by storytelling in a trial; and how literature can shed light on the limits of law and public policy.

Full details for GOVT 6045 - Law and Literature

The course examines the historical political landscape of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States and the interplay between tribal interests, politics, and the federal government. The course also looks at contemporary Native issues, federal policy and programs, tribal governance, relations between Tribal Nations and states and between Tribal Nations and the federal government. Finally, the course will explore Indigenous pop-culture and its influence on federal policy.  Classes will all be in person and will be a mixture of lectures and discussion-based seminars. The majority of classes will have a guest lecturer related to that week's topic. Guest lectures will include, but not limited to, political appointees, congressional staff, political advocates, elected tribal leaders, and more.

Full details for GOVT 6051 - Being Native in the 21st Century: American Indian & Alaska Native Politics, History, and Policy

An in-depth, graduate-level introduction to qualitative and comparative methods of political analysis, with special emphasis on the application of these methods in comparative and international politics. Through readings, discussions, and written assignments, students will explore strategies for concept formation, theory construction, and theory testing, using the craft and tools of comparative political analysis.

Full details for GOVT 6053 - Comparative Method in International and Comparative Politics

This graduate seminar introduces students to methods currently used by political scientists to develop and test for observable implications of theoretically-derived arguments using data collected away from their home institutions. Topics covered include the relationships between fieldwork and research design, case and site selection, ethnography and participant observation, interview methods, surveys and experiments in the context of field research, research ethics and human subjects, logistics of field research, grant-writing, safety protocols, and knowing when to come home. The course is designed primarily for students working on dissertation proposals or early stages of dissertation field research, but it may be helpful for students at other stages as well. A goal is to encourage students to specify a field research strategy that links testable hypotheses with methods of data gathering and analysis before commencing field work. Students, therefore, will develop their own research projects as the semester progresses, including writing actual grant proposals, IRB applications, and pre-analysis plans. 

Full details for GOVT 6109 - Field Methods

This seminar grapples with the idea of Africa as symbol, metaphor, imaginary, and real; received, constructed, and self-enacting; a status, condition, and state of mind; performed, executed, or captured.

Full details for GOVT 6203 - The Idea of Africana Past and Present

In this course, we will examine one of the most important documents in American history – our Constitution.  Course topics will include the historical background of the document from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.  We will look at the creation of the Constitution, including the conflict between strong supporters of this proposed new Constitution (Federalists) and their opponents (Anti-Federalists). How did the Founders resolve their differences and what led the States to adopt a document limiting and balancing the powers of the President, Congress, and the Judiciary? We shall look at the constant tension (from the beginning to the present) over the balance of power between the three co-equal branches.  We shall discuss the role of the Constitution from both empirical and theoretical perspectives and look at how it has evolved from 1788 to the present day. Special attention will be paid to the use of Amendments, particularly the Bill of Rights, to address events/circumstances unforeseen by the drafters.  Finally, the course will discuss critical cases where the Supreme Court defined and redefined what the Constitution meant.  

Full details for GOVT 6271 - Constitutional Law: An Introduction

Full details for GOVT 6556 - Gender, Race, and Law in Global Political Economy

This seminar examines public opinion and political behavior from a comparative perspective using primarily the tools of quantitative social science. We will focus on the intellectual evolution of the field, its core theoretical arguments and controversies, as well as emerging research questions.  The course proceeds thematically. Topics will include  political culture and value change, information processing and opinion formation, both conventional and unconventional forms of political participation, representation, and voter decision-making. Important methodological issues in the cross-national study of public opinion and political behavior are addressed in the context of these substantive questions.

Full details for GOVT 6594 - Comparative Political Behavior

This seminar inquires into the interrelations among three meanings of equality that initially appeared in the ancient world: equality before the law, isonomia; equality of voice or participation, isegoria; and equality of power, isokratia. Tacking back and forth between ancient texts and contemporary materials in law and analytic and continental political philosophy, this course will explore how these different practices of equality circulate and interact in popular and institutional (judicial and legislative) settings marked by historical injustice, scarce resources, and asymmetries of wealth and power. This seminar will include texts by Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Ta-Nehisi Coates, John Rawls, Bernard Williams, Amartya Sen, Danielle Allen, Etienne Balibar, among others, probing the meaning of equality.

Full details for GOVT 6846 - Equality

This seminar is an intensive study of the political thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. Approaching texts in contexts, we will seek to recover King the political thinker from his mythologization in American political culture by carefully reading his books, speeches, sermons, interviews, notes, and correspondence as illocutionary interventions into the major crises and ideological disputes of twentieth century American politics. Topics we will explore include the politics of dignity, leadership and mass politics, rhetoric and democratic persuasion, law and direct action, nonviolence, loss and mourning, race and political economy, global justice, and the practices of prophetic critique. Along the way, we will study King in dialogue with both his contemporaries as well as more recent interventions in the study of civil disobedience, racial capitalism, and Afro-modern political thought.

Full details for GOVT 6865 - Martin Luther King, Jr.

According to Aristotle, human beings are political animals because they are speaking animals. What's the connection? What are its implications? Is it anti-political to use violence to compel silence, or to vest authority in philosophical insights beyond language, or to coordinate action mechanically or algorithmically? Is this association of politics with speech ideological, a way of valorizing some utterances while casting others as mere noise? What are the implications of the double gesture of affirming human animality while simultaneously elevating humans above other animals? We'll pursue these questions through a close engagement with the political theory of Hannah Arendt, whom we'll place in critical conversation with a wide range of other ancient, modern, and contemporary sources.

Full details for GOVT 6895 - Politics and the Speaking Animal

The core course at Cornell in Washington is an experiential learning class that focuses on engaging with the professional experience of being in DC. Its primary purposes are to give students to build their understanding of their internship work by analyzing and reflecting on that work, understanding the context and structures of the policy and political world with which they are engaging, and learning and practicing the professional forms of writing that that world uses. This process occurs through readings, written assignments, guest speakers, and signature events.

Full details for GOVT 6998 - Experiential Learning in Policy Making in Washington, DC

The Proseminar in Peace Studies offers a multidisciplinary review of issues related to peace and conflict at the graduate level. The course is led by the director of the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and is based on the Institute's weekly seminar series, featuring outside visitors and Cornell faculty. 

Full details for GOVT 7937 - Proseminar in Peace Studies

Individualized readings and research for graduate students. Topics, readings, and writing requirements are designed through consultation between the student and the instructor. Graduate students in government who are looking to use this as an option to fulfill their course requirements should check with their chairs to be certain that the program of study is acceptable for this purpose. Applications must be completed and signed by the instructor and by the chairs of their special committees. They are available from, and must be returned to, the graduate assistant in 212 White Hall.

Full details for GOVT 7999 - Independent Study