LFU:online

This course explores the growing political polarization of the American public and America’s political parties. Building on scholarly literature from a variety of disciplines including sociology, media, and political science, Fight Club Politics will investigate political polarization from a variety of perspectives and explore a number of questions unique to polarization in US-American politics. Ultimately, the course will provide students with an understanding of political polarization in America including its existence, its measurement, its causes, and its consequences.

America’s Founding Fathers wrote how their extended republic diluted factional differences, thus preventing any majority faction from gaining power, and allowed the power of government to be used in the service of the public interest. As late as the 1950s, America was generally free from the ideological turmoil and divides that embroiled most European nations. US-American politics was more bounded and political parties overlapped to the point they were sometimes cynically characterized as the Alice-in-Wonderland characters of Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum.

The assigned readings and discussions throughout the semester will examine how politics in America moved from being non-ideological to bitterly divided in the span of just a few decades. More specifically, our readings will investigate polarization from a variety of perspectives and explore a number of questions about polarization in American politics – its existence, its measurement, its causes, its consequences, and how it might change in the future.

Lecture inputs, weekly viewings/readings, student presentations, and group discussions.

Active class participation, student presentations, reading/writing assignments, and final exam.

·      The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

·      Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein

·      Additional course materials and selected primary and secondary sources will be posted on OLAT.

for the Bachelor Program (612): positive completion of compulsory module 14
for Bachelor Program Lehramt (457): positive completion of compulsory module 16

For students of the BA Teacher Training Program (457), it is strongly recommended to have passed the VU Introduction to American Cultures.