This seminar is designed to help you to engage critically and think systematically about crucial questions that are global in scope and to guide you through the process of developing a significant research paper. This is not a field seminar in international relations. Lectures and readings will touch on some foundational theories and concepts in comparative and international politics but will be heavily focused on principles of social science research. The issues and problems covered during class discussions and that you read and write about will be driven by your own geographical and substantive interests. The course is also designed to help you to connect your academic pursuits with your professional development in your internships and the broader political ecosystem of Washington, DC. Through the course, we will collectively engage with some of the most crucial problems facing the world’s peoples in the 21st century while examining their causes, consequences, and potential solutions.
About the Professor: Professor Michael Danielson has taught at UCDC since 2014. He is also a Research Fellow at the American University Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and has taught courses in Latin American politics at various universities in Washington, DC. His book Emigrants Get Political: Mexican Migrants Engage Their Home Towns (Oxford 2018) examines the ways in which Mexican migrants engage with and shape the politics of their home towns. He has also studied the politics of indigenous rights movements in Latin America and am co-editor of Latin America’s Multicultural Movements and the Struggle Between Communitarianism, Autonomy, and Human Rights (Oxford 2013). My current research includes projects on the climate–migration nexus, migration and refugee studies, violent democracies in Mexico and Central America, and migrant mayors. When not teaching, I work as an expert consultant on social science research methodology, migration and displacement, and Latin American politics and society. Additionally, I regularly serve as an expert witness on country conditions in Mexico and Honduras in US immigration courts. I am a political scientist by training (PhD 2013, American University) with training in comparative and international politics and hold an MA in International Policy Studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) and Spanish and Philosophy degrees from Santa Clara University.
Requirement for ALL semester students:
The first four weeks of this semester (August 24 to September 14) will be spent in a special topics module taught by Professor Marc Sandalow on Wednesdays, 6:30-9:30 p.m. This module will account for 15% of the core seminar final course grade. Please contact Professor Sandalow (marc.sandalow@ucdc.edu) with questions.
Your selected seminar will begin the week of September 19 and your seminar instructor will officially be your instructor of record for the term, responsible for computing and submitting final course grades at the end of the term.
**NO additional registration required.