Time Schedule:
Ellis Goldberg
POL S 447
Seattle Campus
Selected comparative political problems, political institutions, processes, and issues in comparative perspective. Strongly recommended: POL S 204.
Class description
Description. This course will allow students to look at how politics and biology intersect. Specifically we will look at how political systems have been used to shape the contours of family, at how family strategies for survival affect politics, and at how choices about family formation can affect political discussions. We will look specifically at how nobles, commoners and the Church shaped medieval European family structures, the debates about teenage pregnancy in twentieth century America, and how the strategies of Egyptian families in the 1990s shaped policy preferences of elites in a period of economic restructuring.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
The course will also examine how anthropologists, historians, sociologists and political scientists define family and understand its place in social and political structures.
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
Texts. Readings for the course will include Luker, Dubious Conceptions; Goody, The Development of the Family; Coontz, The Way We Never Were. There will also be some readings.
Grading. Papers: 70 % Weekly reading notes or precis: 20 % Class/quiz participation: 10 % Other: % TOTAL: 100 %
