Graduate

The curriculum of the graduate program is divided into six general areas: American Politics, Comparative Politics, Formal Theory/Quantitative Methods, International Relations, Political Theory, and Race, Ethnicity & Politics. Prospective applicants are encouraged to visit the field websites and the faculty pages to explore the variety of research programs underway in the Department. We encourage our students to be well-rounded in their study of politics: the Department requires study in two major and two minor fields. One result of this is a collegial atmosphere among our graduate cohort.

The boundaries between these general fields are intentionally permeable, as are the boundaries between our Department and other academic disciplines. Formal theory and methods, for example, offers training that supports research across most of the subfields. Political Economy, an area of marked departmental strength, overlaps Comparative Politics and International Relations, and also invites interdisciplinary work with the Department of Economics. Similarly, the subfield of Political Theory is linked, through cross-appointments and the various interdisciplinary centers on campus, with a variety of departments including history, public policy, philosophy, classics, sociology, and literary & cultural studies.