POLS 101 Instructor: Heather Frey Office and Hours: hfrey@hawaii.edu

AMERICAN POLITICSI. COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course will explore some major themes of American politics by introducing you to the methods political scientists use to study governance, institutions, and politics. While exploring these topics and methods, we will be taking an analytical lens with regards to the conventions of political science when examining American politics and will use our class time testing out new ideas with pointed debate. The goal of this course is to provide some answers as to why myths about American government and political life persist despite recurring challenges and proposed alternatives.

This course is divided into three thematic sections. First, we will take a critical look at the formal institutions of the United States federal government by beginning with the assumption that they are designed to be un democratic and un representative. Next, we will examine how the ‐ ‐United States represents American culture by assuming that states have to produce the nations they claim to represent as nation states. Finally, we will explore the operations of power in ‐contemporary American politics by assuming that political life in the United States is fundamentally dependent upon inequality, especially racial inequality, and that digital technology offers the means for fixing inequality and liberating the oppressed- especially in times of emergency. The goal of each section will be to disprove our assumptions with examples from the readings, in class debate, and independent research projects.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

 Cogently explain conditions which led to contemporary American political life

 Be able to craft and defend evidence based arguments in writing and in public ‐settings

 Communicate effectively in public settings about complex political issues

 Formulate and execute a research project using the methods of political science

II. IMPORTANT COURSE INFORMATION

Students are required to follow campus policies as listed in the course catalog. Students are required to be respectful of their classmates and refrain from disruptive behavior in the classroom and on campus. Here are some additional things you need to know about this course:

Services for Students with Disabilities: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal anti discrimination statute that provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with‐ disabilities, including reasonable accommodation of their disabilities. If you have a disability requiring an accommodation, please let me know and contact the Student Services Center on Campus.

Email Communications: Please ensure that your email has an appropriate subject line, such as ‘POLS 101 Assignment Question’ and include your full name. Please do not write emails as though they are texts – you should consider all email communication with instructors as business letters. A word of warning: non university email addresses often end up in spam ‐folders. Please use your university email account to be certain that your email arrives without delay in my inbox and not a spam folder. If I do not reply to your email within two days, please check with me to be certain I have received it.

Syllabus Changes: Throughout the semester, the course schedule and required readings may change. Changes will be announced in class, by email, and an always up to date version of the ‐ ‐course syllabus will be posted online. Changes will be announced in class, but it is your responsibility to keep up with the course schedule and contact me if you have any questions or concerns regarding the course.

III. COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Reading is absolutely necessary for this course. You can obtain a physical copy of each of the following texts, digital copies are acceptable as well. The required texts are:

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle AlexanderThinking in an Emergency by Elaine Scarry

You must always bring a copy of the text we will be discussing to class with you either in physical or in digital form.

To do well in this course and earn a participation grade, you must read the assigned texts marked in the Course Schedule below before we meet and be prepared to discuss the readings in class. Reading these texts can be difficult, so you should engage in active reading by taking notes on what you read and underlining important passages. You may share texts with a classmate. You should always have easy access to the texts during class and outside the classroom because I will call on you to read in class.

Attendance and Participation (40 Points)

Class attendance is mandatory. This is a college level course, please be willing to regularly attend class without me keeping track. I do not keep attendance; however, I do keep track of your active participation. Be aware that if you do not regularly attend class it is impossible for

you to do well or earn a good grade. If you know you will be absent, make sure to get discussion and lecture notes from a fellow student.

Class participation is mandatory. You can participate by making comments or asking questions during class, speaking up in small group discussions, asking questions via email, speaking with me during office hours, and being an active and attentive listener. Please note that failure to complete the reading assignment before coming to class essentially disqualifies you from participation – you may sit in class and take notes, but you may not participate in the discussion if you have not done the work. If I call on you when you are not prepared you may take a “pass,” meaning that your class participation grade will not be affected. Each student gets three “passes” before their participation grade is affected. You will receive two participation grades; one for the first half of the course and another for the second half. Each half grade is worth 20 points for a total of 40 possible points toward your final grade.

Take-Home Exam (15 Points)There will be one take home written exam in which you will be asked to answer two questions drawn from the texts, concepts, and discussions we have had in class prior to the exam. Normally these exams would be given using bluebooks, but it’s 2020 so instead we will not meet that day, and I will email the class with the questions. I will email the questions no later than 9:00am on the day of the exam and you must email back your answers no later than 9:00am the following day.

The exam will be graded according to the accuracy of the claims you make and how persuasively you answer the questions. The questions I will ask are not ones that will be answerable by a Google search, so it is far wiser to spend your time answering the question than looking to see if someone else (who hasn’t been in our class) came up with something and put it online. Your exam answers must be sent to me in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format and should be as polished as you can get them within the given time. If you do not have MS Word, you may use the free alternative Open Office (www.openoffice.org) and export your paper in Word format. No late papers, no Google Docs, and no Apple Pages files will be accepted.

Final Project Proposal (15 Points)

By the end of this course, you will have been introduced to several of the major methods used by political scientists and themes of American politics. Your final project will demonstrate your mastery of both. For your final project, you will answer a research question you have developed about American politics using the methods, texts, and ideas we have discussed in class. The first step will be to create and submit a final project proposal, due via email as a Word document (.doc or .docx) that includes the following:

1) Your driving research question

2) A paragraph describing the method you will use to answer your research question

3) Your preliminary answer to your research question (hypothesis) or preliminary findings

4) An expanded outline which details the organization of how you will present your research

5) An annotated bibliography with at least 10 sources

Your topic questions should avoid simple yes or no answers. Example questions might be “When does the U.S. Congress most closely represent the electorate?” or “How is Big Data used to represent the ‘will of the people’?” In addition to the listed requirements above, your proposal may also propose a non textual format in which you would like to present your ‐research.

Final Research Project (30 Points)

The final project will be a 10-page research paper (not including your citation pages), double spaced, with 1” margins and no larger than 12pt font. Your essay will be an answer to the question you formulated in your proposal which clearly shows how you answered the question (methods), how you support your answer (findings), and what you think the larger implications

of your research might be (conclusion). We will use the last two class meetings to workshop drafts of your papers and share our research with each other. Please bring a copy of your draft, in whatever state it may be, printed out to class with you. The final project is due to me by email in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format no later than the end of class time on the day of our scheduled final.

IV. GRADING

There are 100 possible points in this course. The breakdown of points is as follows:

Participation: 40 point Take-Home Exam: 15 points Final Project Proposal: 15 points Final Project: 30 points.

At the end of the course, I will add your points and assign a letter grade as shown below. Your letter grade will be converted to a four point scale:‐

93 100=A 90 92=A 87 89=B+ 83 86=B 80 82=B 77 79=C+ 73 76=C 70 72=C 67 69=D+ 63 66=D 60‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐62=D 59 0=F ‐ ‐

V. COURSE SCHEDULE

Course Introduction. How to Study American politics: methods and their limitations Freedom ((The Declaration of Independence, Marx: On the Jewish Question)

Part I: The US Government

Americans (Grinde: Iroquoian Political Concept and the Genesis of American Government) Why write the Social Contract? (Constitution of the United States) Newtonian governance (Venables: The Founding Fathers: Choosing to be the Romans) Do we need a government? (Federalist Number 84) The Executive Branch (Constitution of the United State) The Legislative Branch (Constitution of the United States) The Judicial Branch (Constitution of the United States) Exam 1 (Take Home, No Class) Money in Media; viewing of Shadows of Liberty Factions: American Political Parties Un American Politics? ‐ (Dator: Will America ever become a democracy?)

Part II: American Nation-Building

What makes a nation? (Anderson: Imagined Communities p.37 46,p.187 199, 204 206)‐ ‐ ‐ Who counts as part of the American nation? (Shapiro: Nation States: Drama and Narration)‐ An American Language (Simpson: Noah Webster) America as the West (Shapiro: Landscape and Nationhood) Capturing Nations; viewing of Scenes from Deadwood National Music and Other Musics (Shapiro: Composing America) American Slavery (Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?)

Part III: Race and Emergency Politics

Civil Rights; Martin Luther King Jr: Letter from Birmingham Jail) Law and Race (Alexander: The New Jim Crow, Introduction Chpt. 2)‐ Racial Blindness (Alexander: The New Jim Crow, Chpts. 3 4)‐ Political prisoners? (Alexander: The New Jim Crow, Chpts. 5 6)‐ Technical Liberation (Chun: Scenes of Empowerment) American Internets (Chun: Orienting the Future) Gaming Race (Galloway: Postscript: We Are the Gold Farmers) American techno ideology (Morozov: ‐ How to Break Politics by Fixing It) Digital Imperialism (Troumbley: Colonization.com—Empire Building for a New Digital Age) Emergency Politics (Scarry: Thinking in an Emergency, Preface & Chpt. 1) Emergency Thinking. Model 1: CPR (Scarry: Thinking in an Emergency, p.19-34) Emergency Thinking. Model 2: Mutual Aid Contracts (Scarry: Thinking in an Emergency, p.34-

51) Emergency Thinking. Model 3. The Swiss Shelter System (Scarry: Thinking in an Emergency,

p.51-69) Emergency Thinking. Model 4. The Constitutional Brake on War (Scarry: Thinking in an

Emergency, p.69-81) Acting in an Emergency. (Scarry: Thinking in an Emergency, Chapter 3 & Conclusion) Final project workshop, course wrap up‐ Final Project Due