Political Science

This course presents an overview of the major Sunni and Shiite Islamist organizations that have developed and spread throughout the twentieth century. Through the cases of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Jama‘at ul-Tabligh in India, the Hizb al-Tahrir in Palestine, the Islamic Da‘wa Party in Iraq, the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and even the afghan origins of al-Qaeda, the course explores the origins, ideology, social bases, and actions of these organizations, as well as their various forms of transnationalization in the Muslim world. The circulation of actors and ideas are particularly developed in order to highlight the anchoring of Islamism in an increasingly globalized space.

This course considers the socio-political stakes of global environmental change under ongoing conditions of crisis and emergency. It pays special attention to the ways in which environmental change has always been a driver of violent conflict abroad, as well as a key terrain of racial management and pacification at home. Through a combination of detailed case study work and close readings of academic and non-academic texts, students get a clearer sense of how environmental change and conflict is intimately bound up in questions of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, militarism, and imperialism. Drawing inspiration from the work of activists, communities, and collectives across the Pacific – including the Mauna Kea Kiai and Indigenous water protectors across Turtle Island – the course emphasizes how the politics of environmental justice is always the politics of racial, gender, class, and social justice.

The course offers a global perspective on US foreign policy from the early period to the present. The class focuses on major episodes of US foreign policy-making rather than individual US administrations. Topics include general knowledge about the history of US foreign policy; detailed knowledge of at least one major episode (case study) or historical period of US foreign policy-making; the ability to apply theoretical perspectives in the analysis of US foreign policy.

This course explored and analyzes major institutions, actors, and trends in contemporary French and European Media and attempts to situate them in the larger contexts of “unifying” Europe and “globalized” world-media-scene. Students examine the operational schemes, performances, and internal decisional and power structures of different branches of French media: print national & regional press, specialized magazines, the publishing industry, advertising, radio, television, and the Internet. The course attempts a specific analysis regarding the international and French implications of the growing potential of social networks and “New Media.” Students review aspects of the growing confusion –both in terms of competition and compatibility—between “new” and “old” media and their political, social, and cultural impacts. In the domain of social and political presence students study and question practices of newsgathering, deontological principles and constraints, media performance under pressure of time, context, profit-making-structures, politics, violence, ethics, and ideologies. The course examines forms and styles of “information,” editorial policies and the variety of notions of “Democratic pluralism” and “freedom of expression” across the French and European Media landscapes. We will try to define, decode, and interpret distinctions between “news,” “commentary,” and “analysis” as they are being treated on the French and European media scenes. The course analyzes what all these may mean, encourage, cultivate, or block in terms of politics, society, culture, and media during “high times” of political turmoil, violent crisis, or social unrest. In the domain of entertainment and “services” offered by the Media, students examine different variations of publishing, broadcasting, and “accompanying” practices over the last 20-30 years. We may attempt a parallel analysis of possible interaction between these two domains (News/Entertainment), following political and ideological lines and some study of the dynamics of change along the ambitions, the strategies and the priorities of the media industries alongside “public demand.”

This course provides a historical overview of the development of political parties in the Western world, and in particular, those of the European Union and Spain. Topics covered include: concepts and origins of political parties; roles of political parties (typologies); organization and structure; party and electorate systems. Note: UCM offers the same course under codes 801266 and 802451.