Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An overview of the history of international studies and delving into some of the key debates and approaches in the field. Topics include international security, the politics of development, debates over identity and migration.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course introduces students to major approaches, concepts, and debates that have shaped the field of International Studies. Rather than treating “the international” as a self-evident object of study, the course asks how global relations have been imagined, organized, and analyzed across different historical and intellectual traditions.

The course begins in Vancouver, using the city’s location on Indigenous lands and its place within global colonial and capitalist histories as a starting point for thinking about International Studies. From there, students review the historical development of the field, examine key units of analysis such as nations, world-systems, and empires, and consider competing explanations for what drives global change, including power, realpolitik, global institutions, states, and civil society. The course concludes by asking what it means to decolonize International Studies, both as a field of academic inquiry and as a way of understanding contemporary global problems.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

1. Develop critical and reflexive understanding of International Studies as a field of inquiry

   • Examine the historical development of International Studies and the historical-political and intellectual contexts in which the field emerged.
   • Analyze how capitalist colonialism has shaped both global relations and the academic study of them.

2. Build ability to compare major analytical approaches to global politics

   • Distinguish between different units of analysis in the examination of the “international”, including nations, world-systems, and empires.
   • Evaluate competing explanations for what drives social change in the international system, including power, realpolitik, global institutions, states, and civil society.
   • Assess the assumptions, strengths, and limitations of different theoretical approaches when applied to contemporary global issues.

3. Develop arguments that connect theoretical approaches to empirical cases in International Studies.

   • Reflect critically on the ethical and political stakes of studying global issues from particular locations, including Vancouver and the wider Global North context.
   • Communicate complex ideas clearly in seminar discussion, presentations, and research-based written assignments.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

Students are not required to buy any textbooks for this course. Assigned readings (book chapters and academic articles) will be made available on Canvas or can be accessed digitally through the SFU library.