A comprehensive overview of the relationships between the United States and the nations of Latin America, how this process was affected by historical and ideological events, and what possibilities exist for its future. The course is divided into three sections: first, historical overview of the events that shaped US-Latin American relations, emphasizing US military interventions in Latin America, US attempts to establish political and economic hegemony, and US efforts to export democratic government; second, an examination of the principal issues that currently dominate the relations between the US and its southern neighbors: economic integration, trade, drugs, and immigration; third, a close look at the relationships between the United States and three countries of special interest to it and its domestic politics: Cuba, Mexico and Puerto Rico.

This course considers the origins and effects of modern capitalist economies, and of the division of labor involved in modern industrial production. We will focus especially on the transformations of social life and human experience associated with the emergence of 'the economy' and 'the market' as we now know them. The course will center on discussion of the original works of leading eighteenth through twentieth-century analysts. Using these texts to challenge and broaden our 'taken for granted' perspective on the kind of economic system we now find ourselves in, we shall, first, critically consider the origins and effects of the modern capitalist system of production. Here, we will be concerned not only with the system's impact on material prosperity, but also how it affects human capabilities, producers' experiences of time, and our relationship to the natural world. The second part of the course will then turn to the changing character, experience, and effects of consumption. The course will focus primarily on the seminal works of Adam Smith, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber, with supplementary readings by E.P. Thompson, Karl Polanyi and others.

Many political observers and players make sweeping claims about what Americans want, how they think, and to what extent they live up to ideals of citizenship. This course looks closely at what we know about the American people's political and social beliefs and their political participation in all its various forms. We give particular attention to public opinion polls (how and how well they work, who pays for them and why), people's voting decisions (both whether to vote and whom to vote for), the scope of citizen political activism, and fundamental attitudes toward government - and what they mean for the future of democracy in America.

(Open to first-year students.)

The creation of the American world in which we now live largely came about because the structures that the architects of American foreign policy designed in the decade following the Second World War. These institutions were expected to bind Western Europe and the United States into a political, economic and military system that would contain the Soviet Union and ensure American predominance. The economics of John Maynard Keynes, the strategies of General George Marshall and Secretary of State Dean Acheson provided the foundation that has led to the American empire at the end of the 20th century. This seminar will analyze the crises that produced the Cold War, the perceptions of the men and women who shaped the response to those crises, their Faustian bargains, and the consequences for the United States, its allies and adversaries, and for the nonaligned nations of the developing world. Students will be expected to write research papers using primary sources, often of a biographical nature, on subjects ranging from the origins of the Cold War to the American involvement in Vietnam and the final collapse of the Soviet Union.

A historic feature of modern states, and especially of constitutional democracies, has been the importance of "Rule of Law" as a mode of governance and as a source of legitimacy. As states expanded welfare, planning, and regulatory policies, Neo-liberal critics charged that these mandated uses of public power that were inconsistent with the requirements of the rule of law. They spoke of a "crisis of the rule of law." In western Europe and North America, advocates of this restrictive position have made major gains in law and public policy since 1980; and they dominate the field in almost all post-Communist states. From the Left, these arguments--and the rule of law doctrine on which they rest-- appear as mere ideology that defend oppressive interests embedded in the legal system. Proponents of an intermediate position experiment with ways of salvaging ethical values of "rule of law" while adapting law to social justice tasks unanticipated by the original "rule of law" practices and doctrines. Recent world political developments, notably the rise of a human rights jurisprudence and terrorist politics have added new categories of governmental tasks in apparent conflict with the procedures constitutive of rule of law. This course will examine the issues in these debates, combining questions of public policy and legal designs. After a preliminary overview, the debates will be concretized by reference to three issue areas: (1) the organization of labor, (2) welfare law, and (3) political crimes. Students will prepare seminar reports/research papers on case studies in one of these three areas.

South Asia consists of eight countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The region is a site of major international tensions today. Bill Clinton described Kashmir, the focus of the Indo-Pakistani conflict, as the world's most dangerous place. The war on terrorism, especially the possibility of an enduring US military presence not only in Afghanistan, but in surrounding countries including the Central Asian republics, raises the specter of the unfolding of a 21^st century Great Game. (The phrase, memorialized by Rudyard Kipling, described the 19th century rivalry between Imperial Russia and Britain.) In this scenario of a new Great Game, the US would seek to control not territories, but access to oil and gas reserves. The purpose of the course is to provide the historical and cultural background necessary to understand today's conflicts and to examine closely a few key issues. Among the selected topics are the war in Afghanistan and the politics of central Asian oil, Indo-Pakistani relations and the Kashmir dispute, the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, and the prospects of SAARC -- the Kathmandu-based organization of regional cooperation. While the major conflicts will get the bulk of our attention, a focus on the regional organization, SAARC, will provide an opportunity to look at the foreign policy concerns of countries such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. There are no prerequisites, but a solid interest in the subject is necessary. Apart from doing the assigned readings, students will be expected to be up to date with current debates, they will be expected to regularly read English language South Asian newspapers on the internet.

Since the mid-1970s, over forty nations in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia have exited authoritarian rule and inaugurated democratic government, occasioning a global democratic revolution of unprecedented proportions. The rise of open and competitive political systems in parts of the world once seemingly condemned to dictatorship raises at least two critical questions to students of political development in general and democracy in particular. What accounts for the triumphant rise of democracy at the end of the twentieth century? And what are the prospects for democratic consolidation among fledgling democracies? These questions provide the anchor for this seminar on the politics of democratization. They frame a wide range of issues and theoretical questions in the study of the politics of democratization such as whether democracy is the outcome of material prosperity or skillful political actors, which kinds of political institutions and arrangements are best suited to a new democracy, how democratizing societies settle the legacies of repression of the retreating authoritarian regime, and the links between democratization and political violence. The cases covered by the seminar include Spain, Argentina, Russia and South Africa. Open to students with a background in the social sciences.