Advanced study in sociology, with specific topics to be announced at the beginning of each semester.

The traditional narrative of American history is that the United States was a revolutionary experiment in liberal democracy. While scholarly and public awareness of the limitations of this narrative have grown, no consensus has emerged on an alternative framework for understanding American political development. This course has two main goals: (1) to introduce students to the sociological study of the state via a detailed examination of the United States; and (2) to stimulate students to critically consider the politics of knowledge production and become more critical interpreters of scholarship and history. To these ends, this course will be structured in two main parts. In the first, students will be introduced to classical sociological approaches to state formation and scholarship situating the United States in the context of these classical approaches; in the second, students will place these classical approaches in critical and comparative perspective with literature foregrounding how empire, slavery, and settler colonialism influenced American political development and bringing in a postcolonial critique to how the narrative of American history is told.

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills