Theme Fields

Law and Politics is a second field for those students who want to pursue research questions that are at the intersection of political science and legal studies. This interdisciplinary research encompasses a wide range of theoretical and empirical methods and addresses both normative and explanatory concerns. The relevant topics touch all of the traditional fields in political science. Some general themes include the legal relevance of international treaties and organizations, both domestically and globally; courts and judicial decision-making, including their independent effects on politics and policy; the relationship between legal and political governance structures; the determinants of both deviant behavior (like corruption) and legal compliance; and the interrelationship between legal, political and moral philosophy.

The Law and Politics second field allows political science graduate students to formally draw on the expertise of a number of members of the law faculty who work in areas that overlap substantially with the study of politics.

Second Field Requirements

Coursework

4 courses. At least two of the courses for this second field must be selected from the law school curriculum. The list of courses in both law and political science that can be counted toward this requirement can be obtained from the head of the field.

Methods

All students who identify Law and Politics as their second field must successfully complete or place out of POLSCI 630 Probability and Linear Models in order to achieve field certification.

The dynamics around race and ethnicity are central to the political fabric of the United States as well as many countries across the globe. These dynamics influence the answer to political scientists’ quintessential question: “Who gets what, when, and how?” The groups and individuals involved in politics—from policy makers and interest groups to voters and non-citizens—as well as the power, benefits, and disadvantages allocated by a political system; the timing of when resources are distributed; and the ways in which political decisions—be it from elites or average people—are made all occur within a racialized context in the United States. A comparable dynamic drives elites, citizens, and denizens in other parts of the world, as well. Thus, moving beyond the national particularities of race creates space for cross fertilization and intellectual development.

Understanding the scope of influence of race and ethnicity on politics furthers and deepens scholarship across Political Science’s many subfields, including those specialized here at Duke: Political Behavior & Identities, Political Economy, Political Institutions, Political Methodology, and Security, Peace, & Conflict. As such, REP, as a theme field, pairs well with any students’ primary area of study.

The Department of Political Science at Duke University is uniquely positioned to take a global view of race, ethnicity, and politics. The department has a critical mass of influential scholars whose expertise touches on some of the most wicked problems in American democracy related to race, ethnicity, and politics. Still more, Duke Political Science believes in strong inter-subfield and interdisciplinary interaction—illustrated not only through the research of Duke’s REP faculty and students but also by the REP field requirements. Finally, we maintain the strongest commitment of academic leadership at all levels of the University for the study of race, ethnicity and politics due, in part, to Duke’s commitment to employ critical research in the service of society.

Requirements 

Coursework

In addition to completing the requirements that all Political Science doctoral students must and the students’ primary field, all students who seek to qualify as an REP graduate are required to complete REP and REP-related courses prior to completing the sub-field qualifying examination, which should occur by the end of their third year. The course requirements are as follows:

• Students must complete four REP and REP-related courses.
  • 1) POLSCI 703S Foundations in the Race, Ethnicity, and America Politics
  • 2) POLSCI 505S Race in Comparative Perspective
  • 3) One REP-related course which must be taken in another department or school (e.g. Duke Law School, Sanford School of Public Policy) at the Graduate Level at Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, or North Carolina Central University, with prior approval of the REP field chair. Examples include:
    • Prejudice & Stereotyping (Psychology)
    • Black Psychology (Psychology)
    • Pro Sem: Topics in Racial Stratification (Sociology)
    • Climate Change, Decolonization, and Global Blackness (AAAS)
    • Race and Law (Law School)
    • Figuring the Caribbean (Latino Studies)
    • Race, Geography, and Capital Punishment (UNC-CH, Political Science)
  • 4) One additional REP-related course of the student’s choosing (e.g. a substantive course in Political Science or another discipline, an independent study, or a qualitative methods course)

Methods

Students who identify REP as their second field are required to take and pass the departmental methods sequence.

Qualifying Procedure

Each student in the REP theme field will take an examination—composed of written and oral components—no later than the end of the student’s third year. The examination will assess whether the student has attained a firm command of the literature in the field as well as connections between REP and other sub-fields and disciplines. In the event of a failure in the first instance of taking the qualifying examination in REP, the student will need to re-take the exam by the end of the next semester (if taken in Fall or Summer) or at the end of Summer (if taken in Spring).

Religion and Politics examines the continuing importance at both the theoretical and empirical levels of religion for social and political life. More specifically, the field explores how religious beliefs, practices and institutions affect social, economic and political behavior and how political and economic structures and institutions affect the practice of religion. We seek to stimulate an interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion, in which students will combine normative and empirical methods and concerns.

Although we are open to the study of all world religions and all world regions, the faculty members currently enrolled in this field focus mainly on the study of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism and cover mostly the U.S., Western Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. The field is composed of two tracks: (1) the normative track, grounded mainly on political theory and philosophy and (2) the empirical track, focused mainly on positive social sciences.

Second Field Requirement

Coursework

4 courses.  For those in the normative track, we strongly recommend at least one course in the empirical track and for those in the empirical track we strongly recommend at least one course in the normative track. Two courses from outside the department can be counted toward fulfilling the course requirements in this field.

Students will work closely with the field director to develop a coherent curriculum.

Methods

All students who study and identify Religion and Politics as their second field must complete or place out of POLSCI 630 Probability and Linear Models in order to achieve field certification, or complete two semesters of a foreign language or demonstrate equivalent competence in a foreign language.