The seminar will be useful in breaking down some of the absurd disciplinary walls that divide the North American social sciences. This is true not only because the more rapidly developing nations have attracted great attention from foreign social scientists, but also because these countries have important social science infrastructures of their own. The literature on Latin American politics is simply not distributed equally across the continent, and therefore we are forced to devote less attention to the Central American, Andean, and Caribbean nations. Success in the course depends first and foremost upon active engagement in the seminar proceedings. This means three things.
Active engagement means reading the material thoroughly and critically prior to our weekly meetings.
Our small number means that we cannot tolerate someone being out of the loop as we discuss a specific work. Once again, the small class size means that we can simply not afford reticence. The instructor will be paying close attention to both the quantity and quality of each student's oral contributions to the seminar. Students will write two short papers of 6-8 pages each in which they analyze the week's readings. The other participants will pick up the paper and read it prior to class.