Democracy Course Guide

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professors Dreama Johnson and Louis Nelson

This course defines public service and introduces students to the practices that support impactful service. Through speakers, readings, and reflection, students will begin to define their mission, recognize the power of collaboration, evaluate their strengths, and learn from challenges encountered during service. Students will understand how their own rights and responsibilities and those of their fellow citizens combine to sustain democracy.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 

Professor Laura Goldblatt

When protesters gather in democratic nations, as part of their calls they often chant “this is what democracy looks like!” But what, exactly, do they mean? Does democracy have a “look”? In this Aesthetics Engagement, we will consider art, campaign materials, music, and credos from the founding of the United States to the present day to determine if, and how, democracy represents itself differently from other political systems and why such differences matter. For instance, we will consider the United States’ first postage stamps, which featured a dead president and Founding Father, and compare them to the Penny Black issued by the United Kingdom, the first postage stamp ever created, which featured the living Queen Victoria, to ask crucial questions about the role of history in democracies and how visual iconography reflects it. We will also turn to Cold War propaganda in the US and USSR to ask if abstract art is more “democratic” than figurative representations and, if so, how? In doing so, we will work together to understand political systems as a collective ethos that structure, guide, and delimit our everyday affective experiences.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor David Singerman

One nice thing about democracy, in theory, is that it's a form of government that responds to its own citizens. That means a democratic government has many questions about itself. Who are all these people? Where do they live? What do they do? What do they care about? (And, of course: who voted for whom?) Meanwhile, the people of a democracy have questions too. What is my government doing in my name? How does it make decisions? What does it know and what is it hiding? What do my fellow citizens and noncitizens think about all this? And ultimately, what’s working and what’s broken in our system itself? In this course, we’ll ask how American democracy has tried to organize, share, and process different kinds of information. We’ll see how the state tries to learn about the world, through elections, censuses, bureaucrats, and spies. We’ll explore how people try to learn things about their own democratic government, and ask what happens when they tell their government things it may not want to hear.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Rachel Wahl

Is it worthwhile to talk with people who disagree with us on political issues, and if so, how and why? How do forms of inequality such as due to race, ethnicity and socio-economic status impact public dialogue? This class equips students with the skills to engage in conversations with people who disagree politically as well as introduces students to debates about the role of such dialogue in schools and other public spaces.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Bruce Williams

Democracy is currently face daunting challenges in the U.S. and around the world.  Authoritarian leaders and populist parties have undermined democratic values across the globe, including Brazil, Hungary, Algeria, Poland, and the United States.  In the U.S., there are attempts to make it more difficult for citizens to vote. Practices of gerrymandering and unethical campaign finance undermine citizen’s interests in representative government. In Charlottesville, especially in the wake of events of August 2017, questions have been raised about the responsiveness of local government to the needs of its citizens and the city’s failure to protect the safety of those who protested against the actions of self-admitted racist and fascist groups. In the midst of these challenges, do we still have faith in democracy and, if so, why?  Must we have faith in democracy in order for it to succeed?   What do we mean by faith?  How might the resources of democracy itself (its ideas and its practices) help societies respond to these crises? This course examines the character of democracy: What is a democracy and what distinguishes it from other forms of governments? What are the practices of democracy and the role of education in preparation for democratic participation?  What does it mean to be a citizen of a democracy and who counts as a citizen? What are the challenges and opportunities of pluralism (religious, cultural, racial, political) to the life of democracy? A major goal of the class is to prepare students to connect questions about democracy to the different settings they will encounter in their years at UVA, from the classroom to the many social and political situations they negotiate. In addition to reading assignments and short papers, students will be required to move out of the classroom and select, observe and reflect upon a real-life instance of democratic politics in action (e.g., city council meetings, school board meetings, and so forth).     

*Note: Since this class satisfies both EGMT 1530 (Differences) and EGMT 1540 (Ethics), students must enroll in both Fall Session 1 and Fall Session 2 quarters.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Gillet Rosenblith

Any cursory look at the news in the last few years (especially following Jan 6, 2021) will make it clear that people in the United States are worried about the state of our Democracy. U.S. citizens and onlookers are asking questions including: Does our democracy work? Is it failing? Why does it seem more fragile than in previous years? In our class, we will be examining some of the issues which have the potential to weaken the strength of U.S. democracy and consider what are the ethical ramifications of those problems. Who do these problems most impact and how? What’s at stake if these problems continue as they are or worsen? What happens if they improve?

A seven-week course can by no means be comprehensive. Accordingly, this course considers the ethical implications of four significant problems in the implementation of democracy in the United States, mostly related to elections and representation. Even these examinations will have to be somewhat superficial. Still, as a class we will consider what the ethical problems the practice of democracy has engendered in the U.S. says about our democracy and democracy more broadly. In each unit, we will examine these problems historically and contemporarily. The problems we will examine in the class are: voting; representation; money in politics; and federalism and state preemption.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Andrew Ferguson

The world is flat. Vaccines cause autism. Climate change is a hoax. So is coronavirus. The deep state is conspiring against the president. The Mafia assassinated JFK. No, it was the CIA. Or LBJ. Or was it the Soviets and Fidel Castro? No matter what we think we know about politics, culture, or even the basics of science, there is a conspiracy theory to tell us that, actually, that’s all wrong and what “they” want you to think. Why do people believe in conspiracy theories? What makes something a conspiracy theory? How do you recognize a conspiracy theory when you see one and how do you evaluate its claims? Contrary to popular belief, conspiracy theories are not simply the province of the naïve, foolish, or uneducated; we will look at how conspiracy theories serve as a way for people from all walks of life to make sense of a complicated and often baffling world. In this class, we will consider these questions while examining a number of different conspiracy theories in detail, ranging from old classics like the Knights Templar and alien autopsies to new favorites like Pizzagate, QAnon, and whatever 2021 sees fit to throw at us. We will also think about how conspiracy theories are created and disseminated, particularly in the age of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where anyone who claims to know the truth about anything can find others to subscribe to their views. Given the importance and sheer proliferation of conspiracy theories in our world, how should we respond when we encounter them? And, in an age where we can watch new conspiracy theories form quite literally in real time online, what are our ethical obligations toward the conspiracy theories and conspiratorial thinking we see in our own social, political, and cultural lives?

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Laura Goldblatt

If citizenship gives us rights, can it also make demands of us? What would it mean to acquiesce to these demands, if so, and what to refuse them? Such questions about the ethics and requirements of engaged citizenship were central to the founding of the University of Virginia and increasingly serve as a rallying cry for the importance of the liberal arts tradition. But what is engaged citizenship and what does it require of us? In this class, we will consider varying frameworks for the ethics of engaged citizenship—education, self-reflection, presence (or showing up)—to struggle with the relationship of the self to society within the University community and beyond. Why do we increasingly know more about certain aspects of our food supply and so little about others? What are the implications of this visibility and invisibility for our behavior towards each other? Does citizenship require us to confront those who we perceive as challenging our values, and, if so, can that ever be anything other than a coercive and oppressive act? Is citizenship a communal agreement or an individual one? Does it bind us together or separate us? When is violence justified, if ever? Under what circumstances should we bend or discard our citizenly duty? Through class excursions, readings, journaling activities, viewings, and course presentations we will experiment with the ethical implications of the various positions we take—including inaction—when we respond to the world around and inside of us.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Tom Donahue-Ochoa

Liberals scold populists. Greens slag capitalists. Conservatives chide social justice movements. And vice versa. But what does it all mean? In these disputes, each group cleaves to a set of ideas about politics. These ideas describe how society works; they set standards by which to judge those workings; they envision the good society; and they tell us how to get there from here. Thus these ideas aim to guide social change. And they do so by calling their holders to carry them out. So, for instance, when fascists strive against libertarians, they struggle over just these ideas: which ones should rule? In this course, we study these visions of politics, or what some call “political ideologies.” We therefore aim to plumb and sound the key ideas of many of the great visions of our time: those named above, and also socialism, anarchism, democracy, and more. What do their main ideas say? How do they compare with those of other political visions? What do they assume about freedom? Or human nature? We give students an insider’s view of each ideology. And also the tools to forge their own.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan

This course will serve as a brief introduction to what we mean by "artificial intelligence." Through that we will consider the best ways to think about technology and its relationship to society and democracy. It will also consider what we might need as citizens to operate in a flourishing democracy. Finally, it will consider the ways that AI might enhance or inhibit such flourishing. It will address the following questions. How might the rise of “deep fake” audio and video files mislead the public about the positions and records of public officials and candidates?We have already seen such use in India and Pakistan in 2024. How much did they matter? Could AI be used to help inform citizens and guide them to richer interactions with the state and with each other? What are the long-term risks of artificial general intelligence? Are they real or do those who promote them hope to mask agendas that resemble eugenics and colonialism? How is artificial intelligence being used today to affect vulnerable citizens through surveillance or administrative means of deploying power?

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan

This course is a survey introduction to the complex and increasingly pervasive impact of mass media in the U.S. and around the world. It provides a foundation for helping you to understand how mass media—as a business, as well as a set of texts—operates. The course also explores contextual issues—how media texts and businesses are received by audiences and by regulatory bodies.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Kristina Richardson

Explores the history of the Middle East and North Africa from late antiquity to the rise to superpower status of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. Topics include the formation of Islam and the first Arab-Islamic conquests; the fragmentation of the empire of the caliphate; the historical development of Islamic social, legal, and political institutions; science and philosophy; and the impact of invaders (Turks, Crusaders, and Mongols).

You won’t be reporting the news in this course. Instead, you will be asked to think critically about past and current industry practices and effects. You’ll research and propose solutions. And you will work in small teams to pitch your own news-sharing model. 

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Emily Burrill

Studies the history of Africa and its interaction with the western world from the mid-19th century to the present. Emphasizes continuities in African civilization from imperialism to independence that transcend the colonial interlude of the 20th century.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Alexander Motchoulski

Examines and evaluates some basic practices and principles of Anglo-American law. Discusses the justification of punishment, the death penalty, legal liability, good Samaritan laws, and the legal enforcement of morality.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Joseph Seeley

This course traces Korea's history from its unified rule under the Choson dynasty (1392-1910) to Japanese colonization (1910-1945) and subsequent division into the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Republic of Korea (South Korea). It examines how processes of reform, empire, civil war, revolution, and industrialization shaped both Koreas' development and how ordinary people experienced this tumultuous history.

Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy

Professor Peter Johannessen

This course will introduce students to both the process of public policy and the tools of policy analysis. The first part examines the actors, institutions, and procedures involved in the adoption, implementation, and evaluation of public policy. The second part introduces students to the basic concepts and tools of policy analysis including problem definition, specification of alternatives, and solution analysis.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Deborah Kang

This course will trace the origins of today's immigration policy debates by providing students with a comprehensive overview of American immigration law and policy from the eighteenth century to the present. The course will also explore how state and federal policies impacted a wide array of immigrants, including the Irish, Chinese, and Mexican arrivals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor TBA

This course explores the theoretical ideas that informed the creation and development of America's political system and considers some of the major contemporary challenges to the maintenance of American liberal democracy. Topics to be treated include the political thought of the American Founders, the place of religion in public life, the nature of written constitutions and the role of America in the world.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Stephen Parks

Students in this course will explore the role of public writing within non-violent campaigns for democratic and human rights. The opening moments of the course will focus on theories of public writing, democracy, and non-violent movements. More than just study such theories, however, this course will actively train students in how to undertake such public work. Students will work through a series of workshops on non-violent organizing strategies created by the Nobel Peace Prize nominated Center for Applied Nonviolent Actions and Strategies (canvasopedia.org), with direct engagement with its founder Srdja Popovic. 

Students will then typically work directly on a specific international project focused on democratic rights. Past projects have included working with Evan Mawarire/Zimbabwe and Myo Yan Naung Thein/Myanmar, as well as worked with Russian advocates and Ukrainian students on issues of democracy and authoritarianism. In the past, students have also taken part in international dialogues with college advocates, which resulted in the publication Equality and Freedom: An Engaged Generation/A Troubled World as well as (available through the Working and Writing for Change Series, Parlor Press).

Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost

Professor Matt Banfield

This course aims to explore the role of higher education in fostering civic participation. By examining historical and contemporary perspectives, students will develop an understanding of how colleges and universities serve as catalysts for civic participation and social change. The course will introduce key concepts, theories, and practices related to civic participation, with a focus on how students can contribute to their communities.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Kate Sweeney

This course introduces you to the style and structure of news writing. The main goals are to sharpen your writing, reporting, and critical thinking skills, as well as teach you about news values and ethics. We will focus on writing “hard news” stories and feature stories, and we will draw from current events to discuss what makes news newsworthy.

The course is practical. It’s designed to teach you to think like a journalist and participate in the truth-telling process by learning to report and write accurate stories on deadline. You’ll receive feedback on your writing, and you will have the opportunity to revise your writing for inclusion in an end-of-the-semester portfolio.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Keara Goin

This is a hands-on introduction to global media history. The course situates technologies, industries, texts and programs in the context of social, cultural, and political changes. Students will acquire basic competencies in historical research and writing: developing research questions, evaluating secondary sources, selecting archives, querying databases, managing notes, citing sources, sharing resources, and communicating findings as a team.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Gerard Alexander

Surveys developments since 1945 in democratic stability, party politics, and political economy in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Robin Means Coleman

Black horror is a primer on the quest for social justice. What can such a boundary-pushing genre teach us about paths to solidarity and democracy? What can we learn about disrupting racism, misogyny, and anti-Blackness? If horror is radical transgression, then we have much to learn from movies such as Candyman, The First Purge, Get Out, Eve’s Bayou, Blacula, Attack the Block, Demon Knight, Tales from the Hood, Sugar Hill, and Ganja & Hess.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Nicholas Winter

This course examines public opinion and its place in American democracy. We study the psychological and political roots of citizens' opinions, as well as the relationship between public opinion and political campaigns, the media, and government.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Kenneth Stroupe

Provides students with the opportunity to be directly involved with the research, programming, operations, and outreach of the University's non-profit, non-partisan Center for Politics. Includes projects focused on state and national politics, political history, civic engagement, voter behavior, media and politics, campaign finance and political analysis.

Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy 

Professor Bruce Williams

This course examines the ways a changing media system is altering the dynamics of public discourse and democratic politics in the United States. Throughout the course we will critically analyze the ways in which scholars from a wide range of disciplines have studied the connection between media and politics, the methods they have employed, and the validity of their findings and approaches in the new media environment in which we now live.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Heather Warren

This course examines the history of the interplay between theology, morality, social movements, and politics in America. Topics covered include temperance and prohibition, abolition, labor, civil rights, anti-war and pacifism, and environmentalism. Lecture, weekly readings (often a book), class presentations, short papers, and original research.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Rachel Wahl

Will civil discourse save democracy or deepen oppression? Why does speech matter so much to political struggles? What does it mean for political dialogue to be successful? This course integrates theory with practice as students engage in political dialogue, then draw on their experiences, primary source research, the popular press and political theory to analyze the relationship between political dialogue and democracy.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Albert Rivero

The Supreme Court plays a large role in American government, deciding questions of governmental power and individual rights. This course explores how the Court has gained these powers and the ways it has exercised them. It considers legal doctrines, historical and sociological context, and political science theories of judicial decision-making to explain some of the Court’s most important decisions.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Aaron Martin

This hands-on course prepares students to read, evaluate, and design research in media studies. Drawing on critical, historical, administrative, and industrial traditions in the field, students will learn to assess the validity and anticipate the ethical requirements of various methods & data collection procedures. Following a theme selected by the instructor, the course culminates with each student proposing a new, original research study.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Andrew Kahrl

The history of local government and local politics in shaping American life. Course examines issues, themes, and problems of local democracy in historical and contemporary contexts. Class meetings combine lectures and discussions. Course includes local civic engagement component.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Laurent Dubois

Explores the history of soccer to understand how and why it has become the most popular sport on the planet. We focus on the culture, economics and politics of the sport. Examples are drawn from Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, and include a focus on women's soccer. Class materials include scholarly works, essays, fiction, and film; students work on digital projects related to upcoming international tournaments.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Lawrie Balfour

This seminar considers how works of fiction enhance our understanding of the terms of democratic life. The theme for the spring of 2020 is the life and afterlife of slavery in American political experience; and the central authors are Herman Melville, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Beth Schueler

How do political decisions shape the schools we attend? What role does the education system play in preparing us for civic life? This course explores the intersection of politics and education in the U.S., examining how policies that affect K-12 schools get on the agenda, adopted, implemented, and sustained, and the political roots of educational inequality. We will dive into the political dynamics behind major education policies, from early school desegregation efforts to contemporary debates over school choice and standardized testing. We will learn how political forces, governance structures, and key actors—from lawmakers to local school boards to teachers' unions—impact everything from school funding and discipline to student free speech and civic education. The course is recommended for anyone curious about how politics influences schools and how schools, in turn, shape our democracy.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Jennifer Tsien

The Enlightenment laid the foundations for our current conceptions of democratic government, religious toleration, freedom of speech, and the scientific method. The readings for this course may include works by Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 

Professor Peter Furia

This course examines both academic and policy debates about democracy and foreign policy. We begin by reviewing the theory and practice of democracy and the literature on democracy in international politics.

Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy

Professor Gerard Robinson

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 

Professor Amber Mackey

Some argue that a good representative should mirror the desires of their constituents. But what does this look like in practice? What happens if their constituent desires conflict with their own? What happens if their constituents are divided? What is it that makes a good representative—and is it even possible to represent all constituents well? 

We will start this course by examining theories that try to understand different puzzles of representation. After establishing some familiarity with concepts like congruence and responsiveness, we’ll apply these theories and ideas to questions of race in the United States in both historical and contemporary periods. Are racial and ethnic minority constituents represented differently than white constituents? If so, how? How does the legislative behavior of racial and ethnic minority representatives differ? Each week we’ll tackle a new topic from redistricting to symbolic representation to campaigns and racial appeals. By the end of the course, each student will complete a research paper tackling an original question on race and representation in the United States.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 

Professor Justin Kirkland

This course focuses on the study of political reform aimed at improving government in the United States. It is unusual among the set of senior seminars here in Politics at UVa in that we are going to focus on analysis very heavily. The history of reform in the US is littered with ideas about how to improve government, many of which either failed spectacularly, made things worse, or had unintended negative downstream effects. These reform efforts' consequences could likely have been foreseen, or at least the uncertainty about their impacts could have been foreseen. That is our task in this course... to learn how to study reforms and their consequences. You will focus on being goal oriented in thinking about reform. We will concentrate on thinking about the outcomes we hope to achieve as reformers, rather than falling in love with particular reform efforts. With an outcome-orientation to our thinking, we can then ask ourselves what set of reforms will likely lead to those outcomes, and what are the potential unintended consequences of those reforms.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Rachel Potter

Pretty much any way you slice it, American politics in 2023 seems deeply polarized along partisan lines.  This seminar will explore the who, what, when, where, why, and how of this phenomenon.  What does it mean when we say that things are “polarized”?  Who is polarizing and why?   When did this start happening and where is the most egregious?  (And are we actually polarized – or not?) How can we fix this? Should we even try?  What does polarization mean for government, society, and the future of American democracy?

Our approach will be a survey of recent political science books and academic journal articles on the subject of political polarization.  Much of this literature takes a quantitative—and decidedly statistical—approach to the subject matter.  While the material is advanced, students should be willing to ask questions and engage with the literature to the best of their abilities.  At the end of the semester, each student should be able to summarize the state of the literature on each of the above questions, as well as provide their own perspective on these issues.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Nicholas Winter

Investigates a selected issue in American government or American political development.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Charles Kromkowski

This course will expose students to the theoretical, historical, legal, empirical and technical dimensions of redistricting. Our focus will be on election district redistricting in the United States, with the hope that our efforts will inform our understanding of redistricting in other social, political and geographical contexts. Students will gain an introduction to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the basic skills, tools, and data required for an informed geographic analysis of the redistricting process.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Jeffry Morrison

Traces the origins and evolution of American religious liberty from the earliest colonial charters and covenants through contemporary Supreme Court decisions.  Topics covered include the relation of religion to the American constitutional order and political culture; religious toleration versus religious liberty; the uniqueness of American religious liberty; the history and meaning of the Jeffersonian phrase “separation of church and state”; contemporary issues generated by religion and the public sphere; and implications of American religious pluralism.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor David Waldner

In this research seminar, we consider why American occupation-based, nation-building produced capitalist, liberal democracies in Germany and Japan, while in most other instances, including the post-civil war American South, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, American nation-building fell far short of its goals. Readings include theories of nation-building and historical case studies. Following approximately 8-10 class sessions, students will write research papers (approximately 20-25 pages) in close consultation with the instructor.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Denise Walsh

This course examines how power, violence, and inequality function in the global South. The global South as used here refers not to a geographic location but to those groups and peoples around the world who have been negatively affected by global processes such as colonialism, resource extraction, and migration. The course thus shifts the conventional focus of comparative politics from state actors and claims of scientific neutrality to the marginalized and the production of injustice. This critical orientation to the field and politics more broadly means that the course draws upon a multidisciplinary array of readings that are theoretically challenging, empirically rich, and politically provocative. Readings span the globe and include migrants at the Mexico-US border, homophobia in Malawi, and violence work in the oil industry in Saudi Arabia, and activism against the petrochemical industry in China and the United States.

Karsh Institute of Democracy

Professors Bonnie Gordon and Nomi Dave  

How do sound and listening shape democracy? Who listens? Who has a voice? This interdisciplinary seminar will consider the role of vocal and sonic practices, audio technologies, and ways of listening in politics and democratic process. We will address topics such as defamation and free speech, rap lyrics as criminal evidence, audio live streaming of Supreme Court hearings, street protest and noise regulation, and the vocal politics of race and gender. Our discussions will draw from historical and contemporary case-studies, and across socio-legal studies, politics, music and sound studies, anthropology, and philosophy. Students will engage directly with the Sound Justice Lab. No musical experience is necessary.

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Tom Donahue-Ochoa

Investigates a special problem of political theory such as political corruption, religion and politics, science and politics, or the nature of justice.

Karsh Institute of Democracy

Professors Amir Syed and Indrani Chatterjee

This year-long course tracks changing definitions of ‘the people’. It studies governments that limited membership in ‘the people’, groups of persons excluded from membership at different times and their struggles to belong.

School of Law

Professor TBA

College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan

This graduate seminar will explore the ways that large-scale data collection, algorithmic processes, and artificial intelligence enhance or detract from the core values and practices of democracy. The course will cover the basics of data science, surveillance, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

McIntire School of Commerce

Professor Brent Kitchens

This course teaches the ""why"", the ""what"", and the ""how"" of digital transformation from the perspective of incumbent firms that are reinventing themselves to compete in the digital era. Students will learn about consumerization, democratization, datafication ad platformization, and how to drive a digital transformation journey. Teams of students will apply these ideas to a specific organization and help them plan their digital transformation.

School of Law

Professor Joy Milligan and Professor Bertrall Ross

This seminar focuses on the intersections of constitutional theory, political history, and democratic legitimacy.

School of Law

Professor Kimberly Robinson

In the United States, education serves as the foundation of our democracy and economy. Law and policy determine the quality of educational opportunities in the United States. Although law and policy have made substantial inroads in reducing discrimination in education, they also tolerate and exacerbate inequalities in educational opportunities that influence the academic, professional and social outcomes of students and communities.