MA Seminar(2)

Term: Fall 2010

Subject Code: GPOL

Course Number: 6300

What does it mean to study politics? The Department of Politics MA Seminar engages this deceptively simple question in two ways. One portion of the seminar is dedicated to visits from department faculty, each of whom discuss what brings them to the study of politics, how they define and conceptualize "the political," and about the methodology and methods they use to pursue answers to their questions. The remaining portion of the seminar takes up the question of power, a concept that lies at the heart of the study of politics. What is power? How might we theorize, conceptualize, and research it? And, how might the study of power itself constitute an exercise of power? At the end of the seminar, participants will be able to map, both substantively and methodologically, the terrain that makes up the contemporary discipline of political science and will be expected to articulate their own research interests in relation to this terrain.

Pachirat, Timothy

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