Political Science

On this course students learn some of the basic and most important questions that political thinkers have struggled with over the ages, including: What does it mean to come together in a political community? What is a politics of fear?  And what might be a politics of hope? What is the relationship between politics and violence and war? Between politics and morality? How does politics balance the claims of order with the claims of liberty? And how can we use politics to change the world? Through close engagement with core texts that include Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Schmitt, Arendt, Havel and Foucault, this course helps students come to understand the key coordinates of political experience and political activity.

Subsequent to the introductory lecture, this course is divided into three sections. The first main section provides an historical and political overview of the "war on terror" in relation to thinking about other types of wars. It considers how the prosecution of the war on terror has come to shape not only military, but also legal and governmental discourse and practice in the post 9/11 era. The second section invites students to consider ideas and practices of security as a central feature of this. It considers the rise of private military contracting, immigration, humanitarianism, urban geopolitics, and the overlap between health and security concerns. The third section focuses on the political-economic underpinnings of many of these developments and challenges students to think of conflict as an embedded social phenomenon: as much a part of contemporary discourses on the economy as it is something with merely economic implications. 

This course covers the history of war from as far back as the 13th century right up to the height of large-scale, industrialized warfare in World War Two and the global, colonial violence of the 20th century. It does not strive to provide what would end up inevitably being a superficial coverage of all wars in all regions of the world. Rather, different, select periods or conflicts are considered as illustrations to help us explore the central theme of escalation over time and the emergence globally of modern war and violence. This is the spring-only version of the course.

This course provides students with an understanding of the most important challenges that war poses for international order. It draws on ideas from international relations, sociology, political geography, and anthropology to equip students with conceptual and analytical insights to understand the relations between international order and war. Are wars an unavoidable threat to international order? Or are they necessary at times to preserve international order? What have the Cold War, the "war on terror," and the war on poverty in common? How can we understand the relations between war and revolution, war and security, war and human rights, war and risk? What alternatives to war are possible today? How have wars and conflicts been transformed by changes in the international order?

This course examines open macroeconomics with particular focus on its application. It covers the main theories of exchange rate determination and how well they match the data; the role of the exchange rate in the macroeconomy and implications for policymakers; the choice of exchange rate regimes, the European Monetary Union; international financial crises; policy issues facing China and other emerging economies; and issues related to capital flows and the reform of the international financial system.

This seminar looks at political engagements of Southeast Asian diasporas as a lens to interrogate colonialism, postcolonial violence, power, contemporary politics, transnational processes, neoliberalism, as well as globalization. Southeast Asian diasporas have been shaped by diverse historical, cultural, and political economic contexts, flows, obstructions, and entanglements. And indeed the term "diaspora" itself should be carefully considered in non-essentialist and non-homogenizing ways. Nonetheless, various Southeast Asian diasporas share certain similarities. Beyond reductionist and essentialist portrayals of victimhood, this seminar looks instead at the formation of diasporas and delves into diasporic experiences and politics of survival, solidarity, and resistance as well as dwelling and world-making as individuals and communities carve lives amid the challenges and multiple and multi-directional attachments of living outside the "homeland" while remaining connected to it.