RPOS337: Campaigns and Elections (Fall 2022)
This undergraduate course examines American campaigns and elections through three lenses: the institutional structures that guide them, the candidates and voters that participate in them, and the political scientists that study them. In this course, we will analyze how campaigns and elections currently work in the United States as well as explore possibilities for reform.
RPOS204: Identities, Boundaries, and Mobilization (Spring 2023)
Identity is an increasingly important component of our American political system. The identities—e.g., gender, race, religion, partisan—we hold affect how we see our relationship to government, how we interpret new information, and the extent to which we participate in politics. Moreover, the identities of our elected officials shape their political attitudes and behaviors. In this course, we explore the role of identity in American politics, analyzing how identity shapes political experiences for both members of the public and the political elite.
RPOS101W: American Politics (Spring 2023)
This course is designed to provide an overview of the United States political system and some of the contemporary challenges facing it. To do this, we will examine American political institutions, the rules structuring these institutions, and the behavior of key political actors (e.g., elected officials, voters, media).
RPOS204: Religion and Politics(Fall 2024)
Religion and politics are intricately linked in the United States. In this course, we will explore the ways religion and politics interact in America—e.g., influencing policy, mobilizing voters, uniting and dividing Americans—and how this relationship has changed over time. We will discuss how scholars analyze contemporary trends such as the rise of “Christian nationalism” and the growth of religious “nones.” We will examine these questions from multiple perspectives: political elites (i.e., politicians, judges), religious elites (i.e., pastors and priests), congregants, and voters.
RPOS539: Seminar on Campaigns and Elections (Fall 2024)
Political campaigns and elections can be studied from the perspective of candidates, potential candidates, parties, consultants, advocacy organizations, the media, voters, and many others. Each of these affects the others. All function in a context shaped by election rules, as well as by larger structural considerations (governmental, constitutional, economic, technological, and social). This seminar will change from year to year, but the potential breadth of the subject does not. In this course, we consider how campaigning might matter – not only to election outcomes, but to the relationship between citizens, elected officials and governing.
