International Studies

This course introduces students to the study of the dynamic interaction between the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of power in the global economy. The course presents the key concepts and theories of IPE, and how these can be used to understand pressing empirical and economic policy questions facing policymakers and citizens in the 21st century.

This course focuses on the emergence and early structure and function of international institutions. It discusses the various departments or “organs” within the United Nations and the responsibilities they hold.

Between the early seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, along with the Peace of Westphalia, Major European political thinkers first began to look outside their national borders and envisage a world of competitive, equal sovereign states inhabiting an international sphere that ultimately encompassed the whole globe. This course focuses on some of the most significant (British) thinkers on modern international relations and international laws that have been present since the birth of the term. The goal of the course is to provide students with theoretical musculature to think further about "international."

This course discusses some of the underlying issues which are causing large environmental challenges on the continent of Africa, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Topics include the concept of nature as imagined in the 21st century; the "commons" and property rights, and how differing views of those in Africa have given rise to different problems; and the political economy of conservation, the connection of sustainability, and inequality of renewal.

The course addresses the history, current state, and future of North Korea, essential to understanding its human rights and human security situation. It examines the vast oppressive apparatus employed to execute North Korea’s policy of human rights denial and to maintain the status quo. The course also covers the applicable international legal framework, and the available remedies embedded in relevant provisions, as well as the methodology employed by human rights organizations dealing with North Korea, including the execution, processing, and analysis of interviews with North Korean defectors and other witnesses, and their corroboration with satellite imagery and other available relevant data. Also explored in depth is the structure and functions of both the UN system and international civil society.