In this course, we will work together to understand the many issues that have influenced and continue to influence debates about “changing welfare as we know it” over the past decade. Although students will do considerable research and writing individually, we will work as a class to define the critical issues that must be researched so that we may grasp the complexity of this issue and its importance for American society. In the process, we will reflect regularly on the processes of conducting social science research, reading critically and carefully, and developing new ideas, ones that will themselves require further research. Finally, we will pay careful attention to developing oral and written communication skills during this course, and explore how these skills are connected to understanding and developing ideas.

Required Texts:
Cammisa, From Rhetoric to Reform?
Marsh and Stoker, eds. Theory and Methods in Political Science

Course requirements:

Course schedule:

September 3 -- Introduction. After we meet briefly to discus the syllabus, each student will be assigned an organization. You have 1.5 hours to do on-line research and identify some positions that your group takes on welfare reform. As you do this, identify 3 issues or questions that you believe are important.

September 10 -- Read Cammissa. Come to class having again identified issues that you believe deserve further research. Write a few sentences about each in order to discuss why you believe this topic is important, what you might expect to find, what political divisions you would expect to see, etc.

September 17 -- Read Chapters 1, 2, 4 ,7, 8 from Theory and Methods in Political Science. Consider what these approaches might contribute to our understanding of welfare reform. Read the UN Convention on Social and Economic Rights. How might this provide a normative framework for assessing welfare reform?

September 24 -- Qualitative Research, Quantitative research and Welfare Reform/Policy. Read chapters 9, 10, 11 in Marsh and Stoker. Additional readings will be assigned that employ qualitative and qualitative methods. Additional Readings: Seccombe, karen and James Delores, "'They Think you Aint' Much of Nothing': The Social Construction of the Welfare Mother," Journal of Marriage and Family, vol. 60, Issue 4 (Nov. 98) and Almgren, Gunnar, Greg Yamashiro, and Miguel Ferguson, "Beyond Welfare or Work: Teen Mothers, Household Subsistence," Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, vol 29, #3 (Sept. 2002): 125-49. Question: Choose one of the two essays. Write a response in which you talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the method used by the authors given the question that they want to answer and discuss what further research do you believe should be done on the issue discussed in the essay. Please note: If you wrote down questions in class, they are different. Answer either.

October 1 -- Comparative Methods and Welfare Reform/Policy. Read Chapter 12 in Marsh and Stoker. Also, read the introduction and any one additional chapter of Lone Mothers in European Welfare Regimes, edited by Jane Lewis. (on reserve). Write a response in which you use the chapters from Lewis to discuss the difficulty of comparing American welfare programs for single mothers to European programs. Come to class having a clear idea of the topic that you will research, at least two questions that you are interested in, and 5 citations. For each citation, write a sentence that tells me why you have chosen this source. All citations should be from academic journals or books.

October 8 -- Feminist and Discourse/Post-Modern Approaches. Gwendolyn Mink, The Lady and the Tramp (II): Feminist Welfare Politics, Poor Single mothers, and the Challenge of Welfare Justice, Feminist Studies v. 24 no1 (Spring '98) p. 55-64 (available on line) and Martin Gilens, "How the Poor Became Black." (Handout). In addition, if you plan to write about Mink, read Chapter 5 in Marsh and Stoker; if you plan to write about Gilens, read chapter 6 in Marsh and Stoker. Write a response in which you discuss the importance of one of these two essays, and the perspective from which it draws, for understanding the politics of welfare in the US. In class, I will hand out the abstract and literature review assignments.

October 15 -- Come to class having read and written abstracts for 2 of the essays that you have found for your paper. Unless they become inappropriate, these two essays should be among the one's that you assign to your readers. In addition, write a paragraph in which you discuss the questions that you are addressing and why you believe these questions are both interesting and important. Be prepared to have a conversation with me about these questions and about how your research is moving forward. That is, what do you plan to read next? Why? What are you having trouble finding? Those of you who are leaders next week should come to class with two copies of each of the four essays that you are assigning. If you are using any essays from books, please ask Patty to make the copies for you on Tuesday. You might also want to write some questions for your readers to think about as they read.

Discussion Assignment details: For the remainder of the semester, you will be both continuing to work on your research and contributing to or observing/responding to conversations about issues connected to welfare reform and policy. There are three roles in this assignment: leader, reader, and observer.

If you are a leader, the group will be discussing your topic. Your job is to assign essays those who will be discussing your topic, respond to their abstracts, and lead the discussion. In other words, through your assignment and your direction of the conversation, you will be creating a living literature review.

If you are a reader, your job is to read your assigned essay carefully, write an abstract of it, and represent the ideas from it in your group conversation. You should consider both the author(s)'s argument and methodology. After you feel that you have presented the ideas, you may also criticize them, but don't criticize them until you have explained them to those of us who have not read the essay.

Observers should listen carefully to the conversation, make observations about the conversation, and identify arguments that you believe were weak or missing.

Each student has a number. You may find your task for any given week in the table below:

Please Note: Your involvement in these conversations (both as participant and observer) is critical to the success of the conversations. Therefore, you may have no unexcused absences after 10/22. If you must miss class, it should be for an emergency.

Student Numbers:

1. Ryan

2. Alissa

3.Ian

4. Natsai

5.Kyle

6. Keith

7. Liz

8. Macky

9. Christy

10. Gillian

11. Meg

12. Alyssa

13. John

14. Sherri

15. Amanda