If you are pursuing a graduate degree in another department or school, and wish to minor in Political Science, you should consult with our director of graduate studies, who will typically serve as the minor advisor.
Our Ph.D. minor offers you an opportunity to add a political dimension to your program of graduate study. This political dimension, which is relevant for many scholarly pursuits, entails the study of distribution of power in groups, parties, institutions, governments, and international organizations. In our discipline, we ask who has power, how they got it, and why the exercise of power benefits some more than others. We also want to know whether distributions of power are subject to change, and if so, by what means, and in which direction. We are particularly interested in democratizing changes, which is topic of major interest for many area studies centers on our campus.
Our minor requires the completion of four seminars, comprising a minimum of 12 credits. We do not have a required core course, providing you an opportunity to identify a set of Political Science seminars that best meet particular training needs. You have the option of developing broad knowledge of our discipline by taking seminars across our five subfields: American Politics, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Political Philosophy, and Political Methodology. Alternatively, you can choose to study a particular topic in depth, typically within the context of a single subfield.
The College of Arts