Admissions
We believe that often the most interesting and important political questions transcend disciplinary sub-fields and encourage faculty and students to work at these intersections. As a product of these initiatives, the Department recently hired fifteen new faculty through its "Faculty Hiring Initiative", an effort to recruit scholars whose work spans multiple sub-fields in the discipline. Committed to cross sub-field fertilization, the Department of Political Science has introduced three research and curricular initiatives in the following areas: Global Forces; Governance and Institutions; and Democracy, Participation, and Citizenship
The cross sub-field commitments of the department are reflected in the graduate curriculum. The Department is committed to maintaining graduate program excellence in the traditional sub-fields (American national politics, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, public law, and public policy and administration). In addition, we offer coursework and encourage doctoral students to pursue research questions that cross the domains of two or more sub-fields. Course offerings include broad survey courses of the sub-fields as well as the following cross-field seminars: Comparative Democratization; Collective Action and Political Change; Political Participation; Foundings; Violence and the State; Nationalism; Political Dissent; Language and Politics; Feminist Theory and Politics; Technology, Power, and Governance; International Environmental Politics; Civic Political Engagement; Democracy and the Public Sphere.
In addition, the Department has launched cross sub-field Workshops engaging faculty and graduate student presentations of work in progress in each of the three Initiative areas. The first two Workshops - Ambiguities of Democracy and Governance and Institutions - began in Fall 2008. The Department also launched in Fall 2008 a speakers series titled "Politics in America", a cross sub-field view of political life in the U.S. Workshops and lecture series are intended to attract students and faculty from across the political science discipline and from other disciplines as well, indeed any scholars whose work speaks to or is informed by the study of politics
