Lee Sigelman

Michael A. Baer

Malcolm E. Jewell

Few academic disciplines have recorded their own origins and development in an organized way. The American Political Science Association, in cooperation with Pi Sigma Alpha, the political science honor society, and the University of Kentucky, have undertaken an extensive oral history project, the aim of which is to trace and record the growth of the discipline. The program has made it possible to amass hours of interviews with women and men who have influenced the study of political science. Political Science in America contains interviews with fifteen major figures who speak frankly about the intellectual and institutional roots of political science and trace its evolution. Through their words, we learn what it was like to be a part of the earliest Ph.D. programs and to work with early leaders. We discover how these leaders became interested in political science, what roles they played in building departments and research organizations, and what they learned from participation in government and politics. They discuss their own contributions and offer opinions on some of the major conflicts that have divided the discipline. Particularly enlightening are their varied perspectives on the growth of the behavioral movement in political science over the past fifty years. This book is of interest to all political scientists as a historical perspective on their discipline.

Oral Histories of a Discipline

Political Science in America

Bernard Grofman

Kenneth Newton

Kenneth Meier

The Wit and Humour of Political Science is the serendipitous product of two senior scholars working across the world from one another and who independently collected funny and satirical articles on political science over the years with the intent of someday publishing them for a wider audience. The lead editors— Kenneth Newton (Professor Emeritus, University of Southampton, Visiting Professor, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, and Hertie School of Governance, Berlin) and the late Lee Sigelman (Columbian School of Arts and Sciences, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, George Washington University) — learned by chance of each other's projects. Newton and Sigelman joined forces with Kenneth Meier (Charles H. Gregory Chair in Liberal Arts and Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M University) and Bernard Grofman (Jack W. Peltason (Bren Foundation) Endowed Chair in the Department of Political Science, University of California, Irvine) to publish this collection under the joint imprint of APSA and ECPR. The collection includes previously published essays as well as original pieces never formally published. From the editors: This volume collects what in our opinions are the wittiest and funniest pieces about political science and political scientists. We are confident that even a small investment of the reader's time will be sufficient to disprove Baker's slur on our discipline. Like all good humour, much of the work we have chosen for inclusion has a serious point. It helps scholars keep an open and skeptical mind, it picks out our weak points in theory and methods, points out how research may be going wrong, and it pricks the balloon of bombast, pretentiousness, and jargon. And, not only that, it's fun... Its contents make essential reading for all political scientists, even the most senior, but it may be enjoyed by younger scholars, especially those without tenure (or worse yet, without a job), by other social scientists, and even— gasp—by readers unaffiliated with any academic discipline.

The Wit and Humour of Political Science

Ernest J. Yanarella

A fascinating contribution to the scholarship of both political science and literature, this book explores eight major genres of contemporary popular fiction generally assumed to be essentially devoid of political content--children's novels, Westerns, middle-class fiction, historical novels, small-town Americana, sports novels, American war fiction, and science fiction. By uncovering the often covert mythical themes and cultural symbols hidden in the plot formulas of these works--many of them bestsellers--the essays illustrate the debt of mass-market authors to cultural and political traditions that reach back to the origins of the American Republic.

Lee Sigelman

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