Lectures by Chapter

(Comparative Politics slides are here.)

Organized in the order of the chapters in American Government (OpenStax), fall 2022 syllabus.

• Chapter 1: American Government and Civic Engagement (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 2: The Constitution (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 3: Federalism (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 4: Civil Liberties (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet)
• Chapter 5: Civil Rights (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 6: Public Opinion (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 8: The Media (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 7: Voting and Elections (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 9: Political Parties (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 10: Interest Groups (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 11: Congress (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 12: The Presidency (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 13: The Judiciary/Courts (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapter 15: The Bureaucracy (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).
• Chapters 16 and 17: Public Policy (printable PDF, 2 pages per sheet).

Using the Slides

You will need one of the following browsers to view these slides with the narration:

• Mozilla Firefox, version 3.6 or later.
• Google Chrome, version 16 or later.
• Safari, version 3.1 or later. (macOS only.)
• Internet Explorer, version 9 or later. (Windows Vista or later.)
• Microsoft Edge (Windows 10 only.)
• Recent versions of Mobile Safari (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad), Google Chrome for Mobile, and Firefox Mobile should also work.

Narration starts on the second slide. Useful shortcuts:

• Next slide: cursor right or space. (If audio is playing, you will need to pause it first.)
• Skip around slides: press Escape, use cursor left/right to move between slides; press Enter to zoom to slide.
• Show fullscreen: press 'F'.

Links

• Middle Georgia State University homepage.
  • MGA BrightSpace by Desire2Learn (campus learning management system).
  • SWORDS (BANNERWeb).
• Dr. Lawrence's homepage, including calendar and teaching info (syllabi etc.).

Steal These Slides

(The following notes are for other professors or teachers who want to use these slides in their courses.)

These slides are not really tied to a particular textbook; instead, there are bits and pieces from various texts based on my experience teaching American government since 2000. Changing the order to fit your preferred presentation order shouldn't be a problem; the only real assumptions are that the Constitution and Federalism are towards the beginning of the semester and that Public Policy is at the end (I've never seen a book that isn't structured that way, so it's probably not a real problem in practice).

As mentioned at the end of each set of slides, these slides are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. Anyone may freely use, redistribute, and modify the slides per that license.

A copy of the sources for these slides is now hosted by Github.

My guess is you'll want to re-record the audio yourself. I recommend a high-quality USB microphone like the Blue Yeti, Blue Nessie, or Samson Go Mic. I recorded the audio using a Yeti and a Go Mic with Audacity, although other multitrack recording software should work equally well.

• Presentation framework: Reveal.js by Hakim El Hattab.

• Local hack to make the audio sync with the lecture: narration.js (links narration to slide fragments).

• The audio was then converted to Ogg Opus files using opus-tools, with lower-quality MP3s converted using LAME for legacy devices. Ogg Opus playback is much, much better, and the file sizes are smaller, but it's not as widely supported on mobile browsers.