Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session

Purpose and Basic Outline of the Course

This course is designed to provide students with a broad overview of the major theories on the relationship between ethnicity and politics. The course is divided into three sections. The first covers general theory and discusses the social construction of ethnicity as well as the limits of construction. The second section discusses ethnicity as a dependent variable. This section studies the forces that shape the development of ethnic identities and their motivating power. The third section addresses ethnicity as an independent variable. In other words, it focuses on how ethnicity operates to affect important political and economic outcomes.

This course is the first semester of a year-long sequence on ethnic politics. However, each semester is self-contained and students may take the course in either or both semesters. Ethnic Politics I aims for breadth over depth. It covers many works in the “canon” of texts on ethnic politics as well as addressing many major topics (modernization, entrepreneurship, prejudice, ethnic party formation, etc.) in one week sessions. Ethnic Politics II covers some of these topics in greater depth and also requires a major research paper.

Requirements and Grading

The course requires a series of short to medium length papers.

Six 2-page papers will be used to focus discussion on specific works, three 5-7 page papers are due after each section of the course, and an 8-10 page final paper is due at the end of the course. Students are also required to attend at least one meeting of the "Divided Cities Seminar."

Class discussion will account for the remaining part of the grade. Incompletes are strongly discouraged.