2 classes matched your search criteria.
PA 5012 is also offered in Spring 2025
PA 5012 is also offered in Fall 2024
PA 5012 is also offered in Spring 2024
PA 5012 is also offered in Fall 2023
PA 5012 is also offered in Spring 2023
PA 5012 is also offered in Fall 2022
PA 5012 is also offered in Spring 2022
PA 5012 is also offered in Fall 2021
Spring 2023 | PA 5012 Section 001: The Politics of Public Affairs (57600)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- A-F or Audit
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person
- Class Attributes:
- Online Course
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Major or minor in Public Policy or Science/Technology/Environmental Policy
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/17/2023 - 05/01/2023Mon, Wed 01:00PM - 02:15PMUMTC, West BankHubert H Humphrey Center 184
- Enrollment Status:
- Closed (31 of 30 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Politics is how we make collective decisions about matters of shared consequence. This course examines politics and introduces students to key concepts and skills needed for effective political analysis. The central themes of the course focus on power; institutions and organizations; discourse; and citizenship.
- Class Notes:
- If the class is full, students should add themselves to the system's waitlist or register for 5012-2. Contact Stacey Grimes at grime004@umn.edu if questions. http://classinfo.umn.edu/?jbsoss+PA5012+Spring2023
- Class Description:
- Our challenge in this course is to get serious about questioning and sharpening the political perspectives we bring to bear on our work. All too often, our beliefs about politics are based on little more than civics-book platitudes, cynical clichés, and the commonsense views that prevail in our particular social circle. The purpose of this course is to unsettle such beliefs and invite students to think more critically and systematically about how to approach the political dimensions of their work. If you expect most of your future work to be technical - and therefore, "not political" - I'm especially hopeful that you will find opportunities in this course to question that assumption, as well as the politics that underlie it.
- Learning Objectives:
- This semester, we will work to develop a variety of political perspectives on public policy and public affairs. Toward these ends, we will organize our work around four concepts that guide any well-specified understanding of politics: power, institutions and organizations, discourse, and citizenship. We will ask how these elements of politics may be understood, how they operate in practice, why they matter, how they limit and enable political action, and how they can be engaged and navigated effectively.
- Grading:
- 20% Class participation
80% Major Writing Assignments
- Power (20%)
- Institutions (20%)
- Political Discourse (20%)
- Democratic Citizenship (20%)Your grade will depend, first and foremost, on the ways you engage, explain, critique, and apply ideas from our readings and class discussions. - Class Format:
- Discussion and Lecture
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/57600/1233
- Past Syllabi:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/syllabi/jbsoss_PA5012_Spring2019.pdf (Spring 2019)
http://classinfo.umn.edu/syllabi/jbsoss_PA5012_Spring2016.doc (Spring 2016) - Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 21 February 2017
Spring 2023 | PA 5012 Section 002: The Politics of Public Affairs (65654)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- A-F or Audit
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person
- Class Attributes:
- Online Course
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Major or minor in Public Policy or Science/Technology/Environmental Policy
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/17/2023 - 05/01/2023Tue, Thu 08:15AM - 09:30AMUMTC, West BankHubert H Humphrey Center 25
- Enrollment Status:
- Open (24 of 30 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Politics is how we make collective decisions about matters of shared consequence. This course examines politics and introduces students to key concepts and skills needed for effective political analysis. The central themes of the course focus on power; institutions and organizations; discourse; and citizenship.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?heima019+PA5012+Spring2023
- Class Description:
- This course aims to highlight the politics behind policy. In other words, it aims to examine the way in which actors and institutions have come together to develop, promote, and make decisions that impact a collective group of people. This semester we'll examine the ways in which politics happen - how small groups come together to fight injustice, how large corporations impede the passage of laws and policies, how political institutions and values limit the possibilities for change - both within and outside the United States. In other words, this course will take a global approach to the study of politics and public policy.
This course is designed so that you, future policy practitioner, can best understand the political mechanisms and institutions that promote and impede policy change. To do so, we'll organize this course around four main areas: power, institutions, discourse, and citizenship. We'll examine how these different aspects of politics operate, and importantly, how they impact political action across contexts--both within and outside the United States. The focus on the differences across contexts will help illuminate the challenges and opportunities for political change across a number of different policy areas.
- Learning Objectives:
- By focusing on global political phenomena, utilizing social science theories and methodology, and examining varied global perspectives on politics, this course aims to: 1) Increase your understanding of the different ways in which power is manifested, exerted, controlled, and manipulated in the establishment of public policy. B) Strengthen your knowledge of the ways in which both formal and informal institutions shape, limit, encourage, and prevent public policy, as well as how citizens and political actors utilize political institutions within authoritarian and democratic contexts to advance public policy goals. C) Develop knowledge regarding how discourse shapes and is shaped by public policy, how actors and institutions limit and promote discourse, and effective strategies for changing and promoting public discourse. D) Wrestle with the issue of citizenship in both democratic and authoritarian nations, and how citizenship is manifested, expressed, challenged, and limited in these contexts.
I also expect that by taking this course you will gain or improve upon certain skills, such as: A) Critically reading and understanding advanced academic texts, such as journal articles and books. B) Academic research, such as identifying sources, developing an argument, coherently supporting said argument with secondary sources, etc. C). Argumentation and persuasion, particularly with regard to a specific public policy outcome. D) Visual communication techniques, particularly in the presentation of academic work.
- Grading:
- You will complete a policy portfolio project on a topic of your choice. This portfolio asks you to describe the areas of power, institutions, and discourse as they apply to a topic of your choice, and your plan to change/transform these areas to achieve your desired public policy outcome. The portfolio is worth 85% of your final grade and consists of three writing assignments (each worth 20%) and a final presentation (25%).The final aspect you will be graded on is leading class discussion and overall participation (worth 15%).
- Class Format:
- Discussion and Lecture
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/65654/1233
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 13 January 2023
ClassInfo Links - Spring 2023 Public Affairs Classes
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