Methods Courses

➔    Descriptive questions that ask how to characterize a phenomena

➔    Explanatory questions that ask how, why, or under what condition something occurs

➔    Causal questions that ask what drives, shapes, or determines an outcome

➔     Interpretive questions that ask how people understand, experience, or make meaning

➔    Descriptive or causal questions about continuity and change over time

➔    Interpretive questions about the beliefs, ideas, and experiences of people in the past 

➔    Theoretical questions about the forces that shape politics, culture, society, and individuals

➔   Normative questions about the validity and desirability of norms, laws, and institutions

➔     Case studies, paired case comparisons, case selection, process tracing

➔   Archival methods and primary sources

➔     Interview methods, focus groups, and oral history

➔     Ethnography and participant observation

➔     Quantitative analysis and econometrics

➔     Digital mapping

➔     Automated text analysis

➔     Field work

➔     Surveys

➔     Experimental thinking

➔   Topics in the philosophy of social science

➔   Schools of political theory (e.g., ideal and non-ideal theory, democratic theory)

➔   Techniques of political theory (e.g., thought experiments, conceptual analysis, reflective equilibrium)

➔   Foundations and applications of contemporary social theory (e.g., critical theory, postcolonial theory, theories of gender and sexuality)

➔   Intellectual history/history of political thought

➔   Historical thinking and argumentation

➔   Archival methods

➔   Primary source analysis

A Genealogy of a Genealogy: How Existentialism Influenced Party Politics in Interwar Germany

While the existentialist ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche have been picked up as a tool to support a wide range of political ideologies, their role in Weimar Republic Germany has not yet been investigated systematically. By analyzing political speeches, party platforms, and the personal writings and correspondences of key figures in the German conservative movement, this thesis shows that politicians claiming to adopt  Nietzschian ideas in fact adopt policy positions that were different from their peer conservatives unassociated with Nietzsche.

A Genealogy of a Genealogy: Historicizing the Political Thought of Friedrich Nietzsche

While the existentialist ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche have become cultural currency across a wide range of social settings, this thesis argues that most contemporary readings fail to read Nietzschean vocabulary in the way it was understood by his own peers at the time of writing. By reading across less well-known texts written by Nietzsche’s contemporaries, this thesis revises our understanding of Nietzschean language and provides a new interpretation of some of his works.

Selling the Self: How Social Media Influencers Understand their Role in a Capitalist Marketplace

When does a person become a brand? How does marketing a lifestyle online change the way one thinks about self, society, and labor? This thesis uses interviews with social media influencers from a range of contexts to investigate how these individuals imagine, express, and commodify self-identity in a digital marketplace.

Selling the Self: Interrogating Commodification of Lifestyle in Social Media

While original Marxist theories of capitalism relied heavily on the notion of commodification of labor, the meaning of labor and the meaning of commodity is fundamentally different in the digital era when what is being sold is not labor, but lifestyle. This thesis revisits Marxist ideas and interrogates them by transporting them to different digital contexts, where race, gender, identity and lifestyle instantiate the “commodity” in new, creative, and often surprising ways.

All in the Family: The Governing Practices of Political Dynasties in the Philippines

This thesis investigates how Filipino politicians from families that also held political office – “dynasties” - understand, express, and enact their roles in both politics and the household. Based on long-term ethnographic observation of Filipino political families in the home, on the campaign trail, and in the congress, this thesis shows how familial branding is used to both signal particular civic ideas to Filipino citizens, and to enact status amongst other politicians behind closed doors.

All in the Family: How Notions of Family Shape Filipino Political Thought

This thesis investigates how early Filipino political thinkers mapped indigenous notions of kinship and community to new democratic contexts. Using archival sources and applying postcolonial theory, this thesis argues that Filipino politicians fundamentally re-imagined the democratic citizen as the democratic family in ways that challenge conventional notions of liberal democracy.