Courses cover topics such as the role of law in society; the dynamics of politics in the United States, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific region, and Europe; the intersection of music and politics; the role of global migration in politics around the world; the causes and consequences of ethnic and religious conflict; the effect of race, gender, and class on our perceptions of the world.

Most politics classes are small and discussion-based. Students have the chance to share their ideas and debate them with their classmates and professors. Written assignments tend to be essays and papers in which students integrate what they've read and discussed in class with their own thinking.

Politics doesn't happen only in the United States, and it doesn't happen only within countries. It's a transnational, global process. Our curriculum reflects this fact, with a commitment that is reflected in our requirement that majors gain a basic proficiency in a foreign language. Our courses on the United States also incorporate a global focus.

Our faculty make crucial contributions to many interdisciplinary programs on campus, including environmental studies, legal studies, women's studies, culture and communication, and first-year Ithaca Seminars. These programs involve not only politics majors but students from many different disciplines and programs. This kind of interdisciplinary experience is part of what makes our classes exciting and challenging.

Faculty research interests currently range from memory in South Africa to the homeless in U.S. cities; from democracy assistance in the Balkans to the role of unions in U.S. political party strategies; from the connection between militarism and gender to the effects of the "war on terror" on upstate New York; from the role of Native Americans in the birth of international relations theory to the role of women in Islam; from the deportation of undocumented workers from New York City to the question of tolerance in liberal democracies. Faculty members have published numerous books and articles and regularly present at major national and international conferences.

Our research contributes in crucial ways to both the topics of the courses we teach and the way we teach them.