Minor in International Relations

This course is a broad introductory survey of international relations. It acquaints students with the fundamental concepts and theories used in the discipline that help us make sense of our political world, and are crucial for further analysis of the field. The course gives students a taste of the theoretical debates and practical dynamics of global politics. It further examines some of the major challenges that humanity faces in the 21st century. Students get a chance to learn about and take part in the major debates of the discipline, for example concerning actors in the international system, the sources of insecurity, the relevance of economics to international politics, the importance of fighting poverty and underdevelopment, questions about how best to address environmental challenges, whether the state is still important and if globalization is a phenomena of the 20th century.

This course is designed to be a study of the evolution, and gradual development of, the European ‘states’ system. It will provide a comparative cultural, economic, historical, and political analysis of how international systems have evolved and functioned, illustrating the ways in which ‘states’ interact with one another within systems. It will begin with the fall of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, move through to the early European systems of the medieval period, on to the wars of religion of the sixteenth century, the defeat of Napoleon in 1813, and end with the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. This course will analyse the development of European international systems, the methods via which they were spread, and examine the elaborate rules and practices that regulate them.