Spring Semester 2025

About the Instructor:

Requirement for ALL semester students: 

This course takes an in-depth and comparative look at the most powerful states of the emerging modern world: the Ottomans of Anatolia (1453-1923), the Safavids of Iran (1501-1736), and the Mughals of South Asia (1528-1858). Between them, these states commanded western Asia and Asia Minor and were the principal counterparts to the nascent European colonial powers of Britain, France, and Holland. During a time when all of these states were on equal footing, there was an extensive flow of goods and ideas between these world regions. We will explore how the interactions of the Islamic powers among themselves, as well as their dialogue with the European states, were both foundational to the shaping of the modern world as we know it.

About the Instructor:

Alka Patel is Professor in the Department of Art History and in the PhD Program for Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and her PhD from Harvard University. Patel's research has focused on South Asia and its connections with Iran and Central Asia, including overland and Indian Ocean maritime networks. Her works include Building Communities in Gujarat: Architecture and Society during the Twelfth-Fourteenth Centuries (Brill 2004), Communities and Commodities: Western India and the Indian Ocean, for which she was guest editor of a special issue of Ars Orientalis XXXIV (2004). Patel’s interests have expanded to include mercantile networks and architectural patronage in 18th-19th-century South Asia, as evidenced in Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition (co-ed. K. Leonard, Brill 2012). Her recent volume India and Iran in the Longue Durée (Jordan Center for Persian Studies, 2017), co-edited with ancient Iranist Touraj Daryaee, resulted from an international conference convening a wide array of specialists analyzing Indo-Iranian connections over two millennia. Her current monographic project on the Ghurids of Afghanistan and northern India comprises two volumes, the first of which was published in 2022.

Requirement for ALL semester students: 

About the Instructor:

About the Instructor:

Many Americans can name several presidents and even have opinions on “good” versus “bad” presidents. But what do presidents actually do, what resources and limitations do they have in their ability to act, and how do we measure their performance and our expectations for their leadership? With a divided Congress and record polarization, what can we expect during the next year and a half of a Biden/Harris administration? This course will put the modern presidency in historical and theoretical context, drawing on a variety of readings and approaches to determine which framework best explains presidential (in)action. At its core, this class is about the question of executive power in democratic government and how we understand what we see happening just down the street from the UC Washington Center. In addition to studying and reflecting on the theme of presidential power, we will also consider the limits to this power and how presidents achieve their goals. Ultimately, we aim to understand the work of the presidency and some of the different perspectives by which we might analyze or assess presidents and their administrations. 

About the Instructor:

I am a Ph.D. of American government and politics with specializations in the American presidency, public policy, and polarization. My research focuses on presidential governance via executive orders and how political factors influence the ability of presidents to issue their most significant orders. I have taught UCDC’s presidency seminar since Fall 2017. While earning my degree at the University of Maryland, I taught classes about public policy and Congress to students who had internships related to those fields in a format similar to the UCDC program. Outside of the classroom, I work at Community Change & Community Change Action, non-profit organizations focused on building a movement led by everyday people to create change in their communities and across the country. As the Electoral Data Manager, I work with many different teams and partner organizations to identify target audiences and track the work we are doing in communities affected by injustice.

Requirement for ALL semester students:

The four weeks from March 24 to April 18 will be spent in a special topics module taught by Dr. Jimmy Ellis (or designated instructor) on Wednesdays from 6:30 to 9:30p.m. This module will account for 15% of the seminar final course grade.

Your selected seminar will begin the week of January 6 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.