The Department of Political Science offers a unique Ph.D. program in Political Science and Latin American Studies. This program is jointly managed by the Political Science Department and the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, a federally-funded Title VI area studies program with over seventy affiliated faculty across the university.

Ph.D. in Political Science and Latin American Studies

This joint program combines training in current theories and methods of Political Science with immersion in the languages, cultures, and history of Latin America. Candidates for this Doctor of Philosophy degree are required to take a minimum of 60 semester hours (or a minimum of 51 credits at Tulane if the student holds an M.A. from another university). Candidates must complete 10 courses in Political Science and 10 courses in Latin American Studies as well as all of the course distribution requirements. Students must take at least one non-Latin American content course in each of the four fields of political science: American Politics, International Relations, Comparative Politics, and Political Theory. Also, Ph.D. candidates are required to take, when offered, POLS 601 (Conduct of Research) and, unless exempted, POLS 602 (Statistics) or its equivalent in other social science departments.

The candidate will complete the major field preliminary examination process in the Political Science Department and then sit for two minor field preliminary examinations in Latin American Studies. Each examination has a written and oral component; the student must pass both to pass the exam. Students in this program will also demonstrate reading proficiency in Spanish or Portuguese. A student will formally advance to candidacy for the Ph.D. when, having fulfilled the above requirements, he or she selects a dissertation advisor and defends a satisfactory dissertation prospectus. The candidate must then write a dissertation and defend it orally before a committee of professors including the dissertation advisor. The dissertation committee must be constituted of four faculty members, two from Political Science (on of these would normally serve as chair), and one from each of the minor field concentrations in Latin American Studies.

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