This course introduces students to major political issues and institutions of U.S. politics and analyses the global impact of the U.S.'s foreign policy. It will examine the character of U.S. politics and, in particularly, how it has become increasingly polarized. Students in the course will explore the civil rights and countercultural movements of the 1960s (with the Democratic Party moving to the political left) as well as the resurgence of the religious right and economic neo-liberalism in the 1970s and 1980s (leading the Republicans to become more conservative). Such political and party divisions, in turn, reflect deep social cleavages along class, racial, gender, generational, regional, and religious lines. The course will also explore how the U.S. as a 'lonely' superpower confronts rising powers in a multipolar world. Particular focus will be put on U.S.-Chinese relations. Theories of social cleavages, political parties and movements, key political institutions (such as the presidency, the legislature and the judiciary), and international relations will be applied by students to engage in problem solving exercises of issues facing the U.S, the nature of its foreign policy and its relations with China.