Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the algorithmic judgment at its core, is developing at breakneck speed. This version of the popular Ethics for Engineers course focuses on the ethics issues involved in the latest developments of computer science.

This course is designed to provide students with a broad overview of the major theories on the relationship between ethnicity and politics. The course is divided into three sections. The first covers general theory and discusses the social construction of ethnicity as well as the limits of construction. The second section discusses ethnicity as a dependent variable. This section studies the forces that shape the development of ethnic identities and their motivating power. The third section addresses ethnicity as an independent variable. In other words, it focuses on how ethnicity operates to affect important political and economic outcomes.
This course is the first semester of a year-long sequence on ethnic politics. However, each semester is self-contained and students may take the course in either or both semesters. Ethnic Politics I aims for breadth over depth. It covers many works in the “canon” of texts on ethnic politics as well as addressing many major topics (modernization, entrepreneurship, prejudice, ethnic party formation, etc.) in one week sessions. Ethnic Politics II covers some of these topics in greater depth and also requires a major research paper.

Discerning the ethnic and racial dimensions of politics is considered by some indispensable to understanding contemporary world politics. This course seeks to answer fundamental questions about racial and ethnic politics. To begin, what are the bases of ethnic and racial identities? What accounts for political mobilization based upon such identities? What are the political claims and goals of such mobilization and is conflict between groups and/or with government forces inevitable? How do ethnic and racial identities intersect with other identities, such as gender and class, which are themselves the sources of social, political, and economic cleavages? Finally, how are domestic ethnic/racial politics connected to international human rights? To answer these questions, the course begins with an introduction to dominant theoretical approaches to racial and ethnic identity. The course then considers these approaches in light of current events in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States.

This course examines similarities and differences in politics and political economy in Britain, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. In particular, the course focuses on the structure of political power within the state, and on important institutions that form the link between state and society, especially political parties and interest organizations.

This course investigates theories and practices of feminist inquiry across a range of disciplines. Feminist research involves rethinking disciplinary assumptions and methodologies, developing new understandings of what counts as knowledge, seeking alternative ways of understanding the origins of problems/issues, formulating new ways of asking questions and redefining the relationship between subjects and objects of study.
What makes research distinctively feminist lies in the complex connections between epistemologies, methodologies and research methods. This course explores how these connections are formed in the traditional disciplines and raise questions about why they are inadequate and/or problematic for feminist inquiry and what, specifically, are the feminist critiques of these intersections.
This course is part of the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies at MIT.

This course analyzes theories of gender and politics, especially ideologies of gender and their construction. Also discussed are definitions of public and private spheres, gender issues in citizenship, the development of the welfare state, experiences of war and revolution, class formation, and the politics of sexuality.
Graduate students are expected to pursue the subject in greater depth through reading and individual research.

This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.

As taught Autumn Semester 2010/2011.

This module assesses changing attitudes to representative politics in the US and UK, specifically political parties and those who lead them, through their representation in films, plays and novels since the C19th.

How formal – party - politics is represented in films, novels, short stories, plays and television (note: in this module these five forms are covered by the term 'fiction') is an exciting and growing area of research. This is especially so in the US, but also (slowly but surely) in the UK. While the study of narrowly defined 'political' novels has a long lineage, it is only during the last decade or so that an interest in fictions expressed on the stage, screen and page has crept into more mainstream analysis.

Module Code: M13092

Suitable for study at: undergraduate level 3

Credits: 20

Professor Steven Fielding

Professor Fielding is Professor of Political History and Director of the Centre for British Politics

He is able to comment on most aspects of British contemporary politics and modern political history, but has a specialist interest in the Labour Party and popular perceptions of politics in general.

Professor Fielding has appeared many times on Sky News, Channel Four News, Radio 4 and Radio 5 as well as various local and international radio stations. He has been interviewed for the Guardian, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and numerous other international publications. He has written for the Guardian, the BBC website, Yorkshire Post, Prospect, Progress as well as History and Policy. In July 2010 he wrote and presented a documentary on Radio 4, 'Dramatising New Labour'.

This seminar provides an overview of the field of international relations. Each week, a different approach to explaining international relations will be examined. By surveying major concepts and theories in the field, the seminar will also assist graduate students in preparing for the comprehensive examination and further study in the department’s more specialized offerings in international relations.

This course provides students with a broad historical and social-scientific introduction to a central aspect of modern economic life: Finance. By drawing upon a variety of disciplinary perspectives from the humanities and social sciences, the course offers a multi-dimentional picture of finance, not only as an economic phenomenon, but as a political, cultural, intellectual, material, and technological one. The course offers an introduction to foundational financial concepts and technologies, and will help students understand finance as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. This course also provides students with the opportunity to improve skills in written communication, and to learn tools for historical analysis and textual interpretation.

This course explores connections between what we eat and who we are through cross-cultural study of how personal and collective identities, social relations, and economic inequalities are formed and maintained via practices of food production, preparation, and consumption. Discussions are organized around critical discussion of what makes “good” food good (tasty, healthy, authentic, ethical, etc.), and draw on anthropological studies as well as recent writing and films on the politics of food and agriculture. A primary goal of the course is to provide students with conceptual tools to understand and evaluate food systems at local and global levels. Instruction and practice in written and oral communication is provided.

How and why do we participate in public life? How do we get drawn into community and political affairs? In this course we examine the associations and networks that connect us to one another and structure our social and political interactions. Readings are drawn from a growing body of research suggesting that the social networks, community norms, and associational activities represented by the concepts of civil society and social capital can have important effects on the functioning of democracy, stability and change in political regimes, the capacity of states to carry out their objectives, and international politics.

This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.

As taught Autumn Semester 2010/2011.

This module introduces students to the intellectual and practical skills they will need for the successful study of politics.

Module Code: M11014

Suitable for study at: Undergraduate level 1

Credits:10

Professor Philip Cowley, School of Politics and International Relations

Professor Cowley's research interests are primarily in British politics, especially political parties, voting and Parliament.

He has three future projects, one major, two more minor. The first is to write the next volume in the British General Election of xxxx series, with Dennis Kavanagh, taking over from David Butler, after his 50+ years involved in the project. As two side-lines, he is also interested in issues to do with political engagement, and especially the disconnection between politicians and public (although, unlike many who write on this subject, he doesn't assume that this is always the fault of the politicians), as well as ideas for parliamentary reform imported from outside the UK.

Past Research includes moral debates in British politics and the British Conservative Party; study of the behaviour of British MP's since the election of Tony Blair as Prime Minister.

This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the growth of ideas about the nature of mankind’s ethical and political life in the West since the renaissance. It will deal with the change in perspective imposed by scientific ideas, the general loss of a supernatural or religious perspective upon human events, and the effects for good or ill of the increasing authority of an intelligence uninformed by religion as a guide to life. The readings are roughly complementary to the readings in 21L001, and classroom discussion will stress appreciation and analysis of texts that came to represent the cultural heritage of the modern world.

Sudan's history has been marked by internal conflict, outside interference, and political instability, leading to the current humanitarian crisis. The 1980s saw economic mismanagement under Gaafar Nimeiry, the Second Sudanese Civil War, and the rise of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. Nimeiry's economic policies led to famine, inflation, and resentment among southern Sudanese citizens. Sadiq al-Mahdi's rule in the late 1980s armed tribal groups, causing ethnic tensions and escalating bloodshed. The RSF has continued systematic violence, displacement, and ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Despite human rights violations, the international community has implicitly recognized the RSF, despite their breaches. The current humanitarian crisis is exacerbated by the prolonged occupation, resulting in starvation, infrastructure destruction, and uprooting millions.

This course examines the definition of gender in scientific, societal, and historical contexts. It explores how gender influences state formation and the work of the state, what role gender plays in imperialism and in the welfare state, the ever-present relationship between gender and war, and different states’ regulation of the body in gendered ways at different times. It investigates new directions in the study of gender as historians, anthropologists and others have taken on this fascinating set of problems.

This course will provide students with an analytic framework to understand the roles that gender, race, and class play in defining and determining access to leadership and power in the U.S., especially in the context of the workplace. We will explore women and men in leadership positions within the corporate, political and non-profit sectors, with attention to the roles of women of color and immigrant women within this context. We will also look at specific policies such as affirmative action, parental leave, child-care policy, and working-time policies and the role they play–or could play–in achieving parity. We will further investigate ways in which these policies address gender, racial, and class inequities, and think critically about mechanisms for change. The course will be highly interactive, and will combine texts, theater, videos and visual arts.

This course explores how gender shaped the historical experiences and cultural productions in the North American West during the time it was being explored, settled, and imagined. The North American West of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provides a fascinating case study of the shifting meanings of gender, race, citizenship, and power in border societies. As the site of migration, settlement, and displacement, it spawned contests over land, labor disputes, inter-ethnic conflicts and peaceful relations, and many kinds of cultural productions.
The Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies (GCWS)
This course is part of the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies. The GCWS at MIT brings together scholars and teachers at nine degree-granting institutions in the Boston area who are devoted to graduate teaching and research in Women’s Studies and to advancing interdisciplinary Women’s Studies scholarship. Learn more about the GCWS.

Prepares students for working and living in German-speaking countries. Focus on current political, social, and cultural issues, using newspapers, journals, TV, radio broadcasts, and Web sources from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Emphasis on speaking, writing, and reading skills for professional contexts. Activities include: oral presentations, group discussions, guest lectures, and interviews with German speakers. No listeners.

This course focuses on main currents in contemporary German literary and visual culture. Taking Nietzsche’s thought as a point of departure, students will survey the dialectics of tradition and modernity in both Germany and other European countries, particularly the UK, France, Denmark, and Poland. Primary works are drawn from literature, cinema, art, and performance, including works by Peter Sloterdijk, Thomas Vinterberg, and Michel Houellebecq.