POL 390 - Special Problems in Contemporary Political Science

FDR: SS2
Credits: 3
Planned Offering: Offered when interest is expressed and departmental resources permit.

Prerequisites: Junior standing or permission of the instructor.A seminar in which advanced students examine an issue, concept, or phenomenon of government. Topic, hour, and instructors will be announced prior to registration period of the term in which it is offered. May be repeated for degree credit with permission and if the topics are different.

Topics for Winter 2011:

POL 390: Political Anthropology (3). An introduction to the theory and method of participant-observation investigation of political life. We consider examples of the special insights gained in anthropological work by political scientists in settings that range from the U.S. Congress to coffee shops. We also talk about the challenges of determining what constitutes “objective knowledge” about politics for researchers who are embedded in the phenomena they study. Students complete their own participant-observer studies of a political-field site in the local community. (SS2) Le Blanc.