Subfield Committees

There are five subfields of study within the department: Comparative Politics, International Relations, Political Theory, Public Policy, and United States Politics. Each subfield is guided by a committee, consisting of those tenure track faculty members who teach in the area. Each committee creates and evaluates comprehensive examinations and contributes to a subfield webpage on the departmental site and updates it as necessary. For fields with explicit reading lists, the committee updates the list regularly. In advance of curriculum scheduling for each year, each committee presents to the department head a plan for coverage of its core graduate seminars per internal governance.

Responsibilities

• Oversees curriculum in the field. This includes coordinating with others during Fall term to determine the following year’s academic course offerings.
• Oversees the field’s doctoral program “Theme & Comprehensive Exam Requirements.”
• Updates field’s reading list and comprehensive examination format each spring term, when requested by the director of graduate studies.