Voter Registration tips and C of C dorm physical addresses (pdf)

 

 

Updated Political Science Fall Course schedule - click here to view (pdf).

 

2008- 2009 Theme: Bodies and Borders: Rethinking Security for the 21st Century

"Security turns out to be a broad, many-layered goal. It can no longer be imagined as simply synonymous with militarized security. Security, many women activists working to end armed conflict in various countries have concluded, has to be seen more realistically and more broadly, and that means it has to be seen as more complicated" (Cynthia Enloe, Globalization and Militarization, 132)

In a post 9/11 world, fighting wars on two fronts, security is clearly an issue that motivates voters. And yet what do we mean when we talk about security? Hobbes famously thought that humans were motivated by fear to create sovereign entities that would protect us - the sovereign would produce bodily security for us. Yet, we no longer seem to live in a world where states, sovereign entities, can provide such bodily security. First, we understand that insecurity takes many forms and that simply achieving secure borders will not then produce bodily security. This is particularly true when we begin to question whose bodily security matters. Second, we understand that the very idea of sovereignty - of a state centered notion of security - has passed. What do we fear? How do we understand security? How should we question the formulations of security that political and military leaders present to us? The Political Science Department has adopted Bodies and Borders: Rethinking Security for the 21st Century as our annual theme to allow us to explore these questions.