Curricular Design, American Political Development, and the Future of the Undergraduate Political Science Major

Abstract

Structural questions about the undergraduate political science major have spurred debates in the field for more than thirty years. Today, resurgent growth of unusually sharp threats to American democracy fuel familiar curricular questions with new urgency. However, the combined effects of inertia, bureaucratic hurdles, and resource constraints often limit the ability of departments to respond with meaningful programmatic changes. In this article, we describe our experience creating a “loosely sequenced” core curriculum within one subfield – implemented without making any changes in official major requirements and with the support of only two faculty members – and provide a model for how interested faculty might design a cohesive curriculum that leverages extant local expertise and disciplinary specializations to offer students rigorous, timely tools for interpreting the contemporary political world. We explore the benefits and limitations of this approach through a case study highlighting our core curriculum in the subfield of American Political Development.

Keywords:

• Undergraduate curriculum
• American political development
• political history

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to recognize the participants from the 2023 APSA Teaching & Learning Conference track on Rethinking the Political Science Education for their questions and feedback on an early draft of this article. We’d also like to thank Julie Novkov and Daniel Lake for insightful comments provided as part of our recent program review, as well as editors Charity Butcher, Maia Hallward, and four anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Political Science Education for their engaging and constructive comments on our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joshua Plencner

Joshua Plencner, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Politics at SUNY Oswego, where he teaches courses focusing on American political history, identity, and culture. His research agenda is interested in material processes of political identity formation in popular American visual culture, with special interest in comics studies, race and racism, political and cultural theory, and American Political Development. His work is published in scholarly and popular outlets, including New Political Science, HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics at Bard College, Black Perspectives, Artists Against Police Brutality, The Middle Spaces, and the University Press of Mississippi.

Allison Rank

Allison Rank, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Politics at SUNY Oswego, where she teaches courses in American politics with a focus on American political history, political communication, race, and gender. In addition to traditional political science courses, she serves as the campaign manager for the campus-wide voter mobilization program Vote Oswego. In this capacity she oversees an internship program and runs a politics practicum course focused on grassroots organizing. Her research agenda focuses on the role of youth in American politics, civic engagement, and political science pedagogy. Her work has appeared in New Political Science, PS: Political Science & Politics, Journal of Political Science Education, and Citizenship Studies.