Please see the department website for current syllabi.

Recent Courses Taught

POLI 329: Russian and Soviet Politics
The attempt to redefine and recreate the Russian state from the ashes of the Soviet Union has represented one of the greatest political, economic, and social challenges of our time. This course invites students to investigate this transformation by providing a broad introduction to Russian and Soviet politics. The first part of the course covers the Soviet era from the Russian Revolution of 1917 through Gorbachev's reforms in the 1980s, while the second part explores the political, economic, and national identity transformations underway in contemporary post-Soviet Russia.

POLI 420: Memory, Place, and Power
This interdisciplinary class explores the relationships among memory, place, and political power. The course begins with an introduction to key classical, Enlightenment, and contemporary texts on memory and place-making. It then uses this foundation to examine the symbolic transformation of public space, in particular the construction, alteration, and destruction of monuments, memorials, and museums in post-communist states and in North America. This approach emphasizes the social quality of memory, exploring the ways in which political interests, economic resources, and social practices can shape something as ostensibly personal and individual as memory. The class is co-taught with Prof. Benjamin Forest, and is cross-listed with GEOG 420.

POLI 524: Honours Seminar – Census, Map, Museum: Identity and the State
This course builds on Benedict Anderson’s iconic essay Census, Map, Museum to examine the ways in which the contemporary state affects the individual and collective identities of its citizenry through its efforts to count them, map them, and define their shared pasts. While Anderson focused on Southeast Asia, we examine these governance strategies and their implications primarily in the North American and European contexts. This course self-consciously blends the theoretical and the practical, looking not only at why states engage in these activities, but precisely how they do so and with what consequences.

POLI 628: Proseminar in Comparative Politics
This course introduces graduate students to the complex, fascinating, and ever-changing field of comparative politics. This course self-consciously operates on three levels: the theoretical, the methodological, and the empirical. Theoretically, we will focus on the evolution of the main disciplinary debates in comparative politics such as those surrounding democratization, nationalism, institutions, and the interaction of the state and the market. Methodologically, we will discuss the various tools and approaches that scholars use to compare political phenomena. Empirically, we will look at how these theories and methods have been applied to the real world and with what results. The course thus gives students the basic means with which to progress from critical consumers of comparative political research to active, engaged producers of it.

POLI 629 Post-Communist Transformations
Between 1989 and 1991, Communist-party governments in East-Central Europe, the Balkans, and the Soviet Union fell with stunning rapidity. In this course, we will explore the unprecedented “triple transition” in political institutions, economic systems, and national identities that resulted from this systemic breakdown. In doing so, we will examine and critically evaluate theoretical attempts to illuminate these processes and to explain the different developmental trajectories upon which these post-communist states embarked.  

POLI 659 Interdisciplinary Seminar in European Studies
This course presents graduate students with the opportunity to explore cutting-edge research in European studies across the disciplines of political science, history, and law. It is built around the Jean Monnet Centre Montreal fall speaker series, in which students read guest presenters’ work ahead of time and serve as discussants. The series has a different theme every year: recent themes have included Europe and Memory, European Political Economy, and Post-Communist Europe. Students in this course will also develop their own research proposals, papers, grant applications, or thesis chapters. Although this is the core course for the European Studies Option, any graduate student with an interest in European studies is welcome to enroll.

POLI 700: PhD Research Seminar
Effectively sharing one’s research in written and oral form is among the most important yet most elusive academic skills. The seminar follows a workshop format. Each week will be organized around a draft text provided by one of the participants. Depending on their stage in the program, students may present draft dissertation chapters, conference papers, prospectuses, grant proposals, journal articles, or job talks. Each session will involve a discussant, and participants will present at least once and discuss at least once during the year. This course is a mandatory, departmental-wide research seminar for all advanced Ph.D. students living in Montreal.

BEAR Montreal Summer School 2018
This Summer School, organized by the Jean Monnet BEAR Network (“Between the EU and Russia: Dimensions of Diversity and Contestation”), examines the EU and Russia as transnational actors in regards to regional integration, “soft power,” and societal activism.