Classics in political science

Seminar

The course aims to familiarizing the students with the synthesis and in-depth analysis of a major book, considered as a classic, in political science. Being able to carefully read and discuss authoritative works is a central objective in a political science university degree, especially in the context of the Master's final dissertation. Intervening in the third year of the Bachelor, the seminar is the opportunity to get more familiar with this exercise. The course has also a linguistic objective, which is to allow the students to practice political science in its dominant language: English.

The students are asked to write and orally present their essay (on the book they choose) in English - see the readings section below. A linguistic support is provided during the second semester to help the student in formalizing their argument in English and preparing their oral defense.

Language support module

The purpose of this module is to provide customized English language support to help students improve their academic writing and presentation skills in the context of their class on classics in political science.

 

Seminar

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, the students will:

• be able to read carefully and entirely read a major work in political science
• have developed reading methods to improve their work on scientific articles and books
• be in a position to discuss an important text in political science by confronting the argument to other authors, approaches and readings
• have acquired an experience in writing and presenting a personal work in English

Language support module

At the end of the module, students should be able to write an academic-level essay in English and should be able to present it orally in a clear and intelligible way.  The CEFRL objective level of the module is C1.

Language support module

Students are expected to have a good level of general English before the start of the class.

Seminar

The course is comprised of four components that will allow students to gradually understand and analyse the authors:

• Introduction to the seminar, given at the beginning of the academic year, defining the seminar's objectives (6 October 2022)
• Individualised support. The students will be distributed in groups, corresponding to the book they chose and supervised by a teacher of the Political Science Department. It will help the student to work on the substance of their written work and oral presentation in English.
• Sessions of exercises on drafting and oral presentation in English will be organized and supervised by a teacher form the ISLV (Frédéric Depas)
• writing a short essay in English
• oral defense in English

Language support module

Thursday, February 22nd:

The first class will be organized for the whole group of students.  This class will deal with the vocabulary necessary to write an argumentative essay in English, with the structure of essays, and with some formal issues.

Students also have to hand in their research question on that day.

Friday, March 1st:

Students will be required to email the outline of their essays to F.Depas@uliege.be by the end of that day at the latest.

Thursday, March 7th:

Students can present the outline of their essay in smaller groups during the second class, and they can obtain feedback about it.

Thursday, March 21st:

The purpose of the third class is to help students improve their presentation skills in English.  The whole group will be present.

Students will also have to hand in the introduction of their essays during that class.

From Thursday, April 11th to Thursday, April 18th:

In groups of 4 to 6, students will obtain feedback on their introductions and will be given the opportunity to rehearse their exam oral presentation.
 
 

Seminar

The course is organised as individual meetings and seminars. Students are expected to actively participate in every session.

Language support module

Face-to-face course


Additional information:

This is a face-to-face module, but the students will have to upload the outline of their papers on eCampus.

Seminar

Compulsory reading (one of these readings must be chosen):

Edward Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Charles Tilly and Tarrow Sidney, Contentious politics, Oxford University Press, 2012.

Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy, Harvard University Press, 2004.

Immanuel Kant, Projet for a Perpetual Peace (edition to be confirmed)

The fifth group will take a different approach. It will analyse Ursula von der Lyen's 2023 State of the Union speech in the light of scientific works in European studies.

 

Language support module

Course notes will be available on eCampus at a later date.

Seminar

Exam(s) in session

Any session

- In-person

oral exam

Written work / report


Additional information:

The assessment is based on several tasks.

Students must read the texts themselves and work the subject of their essay and their oral presentation. 

The course grade is divided into two parts: the essay (75% of the final grade) and the language module (25% of the final grade).

The grade for the essay is subdivided into two parts, 50% each. Here students must write a short essay in English. The essay should be maximum 5 pages long (Times, 12, 1.5 line spacing, excluding the cover page, table of contents and the bibliography) and is worth 50% of the final grade. Students must do an oral presentation in English within the framework of a panel discussion. The defense will last maximum 15 minutes and is worth 50% of the final grade.

The followed criteria are applied to the assessment: 1) ability to understand and synthetize the book; 2) quality of the discussion with the book's argument and inclusion of other authors;  3) structure of the essay and the presentation.

The language module is worth 25% of the final grade (see the part of the pedagogical commitment dedicated to the module)

The oral defense will be conducted in cooperation between the teachers in charge of the reading groups and Frédéric Depas. This will enable us to assess both the content of the essay and the student's level of English. The defence will be held during the exam sessions of May-June and August-Septembre.

Deadline:

For the first session, the essays are due on Friday, May 10, 2024. Students will have to email their work to their group teachers by 5pm on that day. A copy of the work must also be uploaded to ECampus for the language module (the same deadline applies).

For the second session, the essays must be returned by Friday, August 16, 2024 by 5 pm (also via email and ECampus).

Presence to the sessions:

Presence to sessions is mandatory. To pass the course, students are strongly encouraged to attend. Because of the type of work involved, repeated absences from sessions are usually causes of failure.

Use of artifical intelligence (AI):

The use of AI applications such as Chat GPT must be explicitly mentioned in the final work, in the form of a footnote for example.

Its use must be reasonable and will be systematically checked using detection tools. Excessive use will be considered plagiarism in two situations:
- work based on whole sentences or paragraphs generated by the AI
- portions of texts inspired by the use of AI that are not referenced (articles, books, etc.).

Language support module

Exam(s) in session

Any session

- In-person

oral exam

Written work / report


Additional information:

by midnight on May 10th, students will have to 1) email their papers to the professors in charge of their groups and 2) upload the same papers on eCampus for the language module.  Each paper will be run through the university's anti-plagiarism software.

The quality of the language and style used both in the paper and the oral presentation will be marked, and that mark will make up 25% of the final mark for the course.

If students decide to use AI to help them write their paper, that use will have to be limited, for instance to solve specific language- or style-related issues, and must not replace the students' own legitimate and original work.

Any significant discrepancy between the quality of the language of the written paper and that of the oral presentation will be taken into account when assessing the quality of the written paper.

Seminar

The course is held during the second session.

NOTICE: to allow students to properly organise their time and their reading programme, an introductory session will be held at the beginning of the first session : 6 October 2023, 2-4 pm - B33 Trifac 2 (-1/43).

During this session, students will have the opportunity to choose their reading group. Students absent from this session will be randomly assigned a group.

Language support module

A list of the different groups and a detailed timetable for each group will be available on eCampus before the first class.

Regular attendance is of the utmost importance and is expected.  Should exceptional circumstances prevail, students who cannot attend a session are kindly requested to send an email at the latest the day before, especially in the case of tutorial sessions in small groups.

Seminar

Dr. Julien Pomarède
Associate Professor in International Politics, Departement of Political Science

https://www.uliege.be/cms/c_9054334/en/directory?uid=u240686

Bât. B31 International Politics
Quartier Agora
place des Orateurs 3
4000 Liège 1
Belgique

Office R.77, level 0
email: julien.pomarede@uliege.be

Language support module

Frédéric Depas
bureau des enseignants de l'ISLV
B33 - niveau -1
Email: F.Depas@uliege.be