POL101 | Political Science I

This course seeks to introduce students to different normative and institutional dimensions of the problems of political community through engagements with scholarship from the fields of the history of political thought, political institutions and processes, and contemporary political theory.  In addition to focusing on the institution of the state, the course will also familiarize students with some core concepts in politics — such as toleration, freedom and justice — from different methodological orientations (including liberal-democratic, socialist, and post-structuralist ones) with a view to capturing the diversity of human experience.  The aim is to sharpen the facility with which students can read and respond independently to ideas contained in different kinds of text about politics.  Finally, the course contains reading materials that have been selected to enable a transcultural orientation for the study of political ideas and institutions.