International Studies

This course is about how the mass media presents world affairs and how they not only expedite but also limit and distort this presentation. It also examines the different forms these media take and the different functions they perform in accounting for current events. It looks, for example , at the 4th, 5th, and 6th estates; the state, corporate, and social media; and the phenomenon of the World Wide Web. A range of contemporary world affairs issues exemplify how the different media work.

This course offers a study of Chinese civilization and culture. It looks at the era of imperial China and the relationship with its neighbors. This course also discusses the relationship between China and the West and those relationship dynamics as China has emerged as a world power.

This course introduces students to the complexities of the Caribbean from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The course does not attempt a comprehensive history of the region, but rather offers a nuanced interdisciplinary exploration around four key themes: plantation, carnival, piracy, and hybridity, each of which allows a window into the unique history, politics, and culture of the region. Our exploration of these themes also introduces a series of questions and topics connected to the larger issues of postcolonialism, transnationalism, and identity politics, which resonate beyond this distinctive space.

This course introduces students to the main concerns raised by critical terrorism studies. Working within the critical security studies tradition, critical terrorism studies argue that mainstream terrorism studies has not been open to new challenges and perspectives. As such, terrorism studies problematically reifies particular sites and structures of power. Because of this perspective, critical terrorism studies poses several challenges to terrorism studies about how terrorism is defined and limited to particular actors. This course explores these challenges, which include state terrorism, the discourse of radicalization, and the role of emotion before turning to the intended outcome of critical terrorism studies scholarship: emancipatory practices.

This course provides an advanced understanding of contemporary China under globalization. This course provides a comprehensive analysis of the market transition of Chinese economy and China's increasing role in the world economy after 1978. It covers topics included, but not limited to, China's strategies in promoting internationalization; China and Global Economic Governance; challenges and possibilities of China's internationalization strategies.

This course offers an intensive introduction to the historical development of ideas about ethnicity, race, and racism in the Western world. Students gain insight into the cultural processes that feed into constructions of race and ethnicity and learn to turn a critical lens on scientific concepts such as racism, racial boundaries, multiculturalism, discrimination, othering, and whiteness. Course participants also are instructed in the techniques of the historian's craft: finding and selecting literature, assessing texts, critically analyzing sources and working with historical concepts such as ethnicity, racism, and discrimination. Though racism is mainly associated with the colonial slave experience and genocide in the Second World War, it has a much longer history that also ripples through to our own world today. This course studies the history of racism in the West from the Enlightenment to the present day. The main focus is on the way in which ideas about race and ethnicity have evolved as categories of differentiation, hierarchy, and exclusion. Students research the complex interactions between these cultural constructs and the historical dimensions of nationalism, colonialism, imperialism and globalization in Western history. The development of racism in Europe is considered from an international and comparative perspective, in part through the study of colonial and transatlantic experiences of slavery and migration, as well as by researching the worldwide spread of ideals of equality, human rights, and civil rights. In addition, the course looks at how scientific and pseudo-scientific constructs of racism, social Darwinism, and eugenics were modeled from the nineteenth century onwards to legitimize differentiation and selection on the basis of racial characteristics. Finally, this course investigates how knowledge of this controversial past can offer a framework for understanding current discussions about race and ethnicity. Note: The lectures of this course are in English. If there is only one seminar group, discussions are also entirely in English.

This course surveys the history of European diplomacy since 1814. Topics covered: Napoleon's conquests and the French Empire; the defeat of Napoleon and the gathering in Vienna in 1814-15 to restore the old order; a Concert of Europe based on a set of informal norms to govern relations between states; liberal national movements and various crises caused by the instability of the Ottoman Empire; the creation of a new form of European nation-states (i.e. Italy and Germany). The course discusses how the character of European diplomacy was profoundly altered, in particular by Bismarck's particular brand of foreign policy and a new wave of imperialism, but also by the idea of internationalism. The course then moves on to 1914, where a minor crisis in Sarajevo turned into a European and, eventually, global war. This part of the course discusses the efforts at the Paris Peace Conference to institutionalize a system of collective security. However, with the advent of new aggressive and belligerent regimes, this endeavor failed miserably. After the Second World War, Great Britain and France both lost their Empire, though each of them in their own way. At the same time, Western Europe tried to further integrate on a regional level and, at first, focused on economic integration. Only later on did European states increase integration on a political and diplomatic level as well. The violent break-up of Yugoslavia with its ensuing ethnic tensions and the embarrassing display of European disunity undoubtedly hastened this process.