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COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Students sit in a political science class.

Political Science at Villanova helps you explore politics beyond the headlines, teaches you the techniques necessary to analyze it, and inspires you about its potential to shape your future.

Political science is an extraordinarily diverse field in terms of the political subjects that it covers, and the theoretical approaches and empirical methods that are used to study them. Our students gain substantive knowledge about how public policy, elections, constitutions, historical legacies, race, class and gender identities, ideologies, wars, markets and migration patterns interact to shape the collective decision-making in the United States, in other regions of the world, and between countries. Making sense of so many different factors is both exciting and intellectually challenging.

Political science requires careful listening to people, close reading of texts, sleuthing to find information, technical skills to analyze statistical or spatial data, and reasoning to develop cogent arguments. We teach our students how to make sense of the complexities of politics so that they can make sense of pretty much anything else that their future lives or employers will throw their way.

Fathe Allen
Administrative Assistant
Department of Political Science
Villanova University

NEWS & EVENTS

In Memoriam

Priscilla Hopkirk passed away on June 22, 2021 at the age of 98. She taught American Politics at Villanova for twenty-seven years from 1967 to 1994. She was the first female member of the department and served as its chair from 1978 to 1988. Her obituary elaborates on her many professional and civic accomplishments and particularly the challenges she faced as a women. MORE...

In Memoriam

Professor Emeritus Jeffrey Hahn, Ph.D. passed away on February 15, 2021 in Washington, D.C. He is deeply mourned by his many colleagues, former students, and friends who remain ever indebted to him for his inspiration, mentorship, and convivial deep friendship. MORE...

Prize Winning Research

"Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan" (Cornell, 2018), by Jennifer Dixon, PhD, was selected as a co-winner of the 2019 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prizes for Excellence in Armenian Studies. "Dark Pasts" investigates the sources of stability and change in states’ narratives of past atrocities. Drawing on in-depth analyses of the post-World War II trajectories of Turkey’s narrative of the 1915-1917 Armenian Genocide and Japan’s narrative of the 1937-1938 Nanjing Massacre, the book unpacks the complex processes through which international pressures and domestic dynamics shape states’ narratives and the ways in which state actors negotiate between domestic and international demands in producing and maintaining such narratives. The Sona Aronian Book Prizes is awarded annually by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and recognizes “outstanding scholarly works in the English language in the field of Armenian Studies.” MORE...

Helping make sense of the news

Camille Burge, PhD, and Mathew Kerbel, PhD, regularly appear as commentators on local and national NPR shows helping to place the headlines of the day in a broader historical and scholarly context. Dr. Kerbel also is an active blogger at Wolves and Sheep. His research explores the growing importance that social media plays in shaping our politics. MORE...

Study Politics and Literature in Prague

The Department runs its own Prague Summer Program in Politics, Culture and Literature. It is a six-week, six-credit program taught by Villanova faculty in the heart of Prague. Students take a course on communism and post-communism and a course on politics and literature in the Czech Republic. More importantly, they find out that there is a lot more to Prague than picturesque bridges and delicious beer. The program also involves weekend excursions to other East-Central European cities like Berlin, Vienna, Nuremberg, or Krakow. MORE...

Activism

Daniel Mark, PhD teaches political philosophy. He served and subsequently lead the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a bipartisan, independent, federal agency appointed by the President and Congressional leaders of both parties. In this role, he advised the White House, State Department, and Congress on US policy related to the promotion of religious freedom abroad and helped fight religious persecution worldwide. MORE...

EDUCATION WITH IMPACT

 

AN EDUCATION IN THE LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES promotes intellectual curiosity and rigor; instills the fundamentals of critical insight, mature judgment and independent thinking; and strengthens students’ sense of their moral responsibility for others and for the betterment of society.