Course Schedule

This page displays an outline of the topics, content, and assignments for the semester. Slides and reading and assignment links will be updated as the semester progresses.

Week Date Topic Reading Video Slides Skill Assignment
1 Oct 13 Course overview Explore MS Excel
The economy and society 📖 📖 🖥️ Explore Tableau
2 Oct 20 Institutions and development 📖 🖥️ Install Excel
Modernization theory 📖 🖥️ Analyzing data
3 Oct 27 Democratic backsliding 📖 📺 🖥️ Importing data
The resource curse 📖 📺 🖥️ Organizing data 🧮
Nov 3 NO CLASS – Think about your final project.
4 Nov 10 Women’s empowerment 📖 🖥️ Bar charts
Review and project help 🖥️ Line charts
5 Nov 17 Programmatic politics vs. clientelism 📖 🖥️ Scatter plots
Vote buying 📖 🖥️ Maps
6 Nov 24 Ethnicity and public goods 📖 📺 🖥️ Creating bar charts in Excel
Democracy and redistribution 📖 📺 🖥️ Creating line charts in Excel
7 Dec 1 Washington consensus reforms 📖 📺 🖥️ Creating scatter plots in Excel
The gendered legacy of reform 📖 📺 🖥️ Creating Maps in Excel 🧮
8 Dec 8 Populism and social policy 📖 🖥️
Review and project help 🖥️
9 Dec 15 Final Project Workshop 📖 📺 Wrangling data in Power Query
Winter Break Work on Your Papers! ⛷️ ❄️
10 Jan 12 Welfare states in the OECD 📖 🖥️
U.S. exceptionalism 📖 🖥️ ✍️
11 Jan 19 Unions and collective bargaining 📖 🖥️
Varieties of capitalism 📖 🖥️
12 Jan 26 Globalization 📖 🖥️
Inequality 📖 🖥️ ✍️
13 Feb 2 The populist backlash and extremist politics 📖 🖥️
TBD 🖥️
14 Jan 26 Artificial Intelligence 📖 🖥️
Automation 📖
15 Feb 2 Final paper workshop Working with Zotero
Final paper workshop ✍️