POL 380 - Global Politics Seminar

FDR: SS2
Credits: 3

Winter 2018, POL 380-01: Nationalism and Global Crises (3). Prerequisite POL 105 or instructor consent. This course examines the recent resurgence of nationalism, populism, militancy, and nativism around the world. It examines the extent to which these resurgent viewpoints present challenges to modern liberalism. Students in the course will identify country-based case studies and will bring these into a collective conversation that informs theories about social and political change. Students will be expected to take the lead in classroom conversations, and the format of the course will replicate aspects of academic publication, to include drafting of case studies, revision and resubmission, double-blind peer review, and efforts to construct an edited volume of essays. (SS2) Dickovick.

Fall 2017, POL 380-01: The Global Politics of Churchill (3). Prerequisite: POL 105 or instructor consent. Open to majors and non-majors. Meets the 300-level seminar requirement for the politics major. Winston Spencer-Churchill was one of the most significant figures of early 20th-century global politics. The breadth of his experience—journalist, parliamentarian, soldier, government minister with responsibility for the Royal Navy and later the British economy, and ultimately prime minister—helped to shape the contemporary world. He was also an author and historian who famously proclaimed that history would be kind to him because he would write it. This course uses his extensive writings to examine the global politics of his time, pairing them with selections drawn from international relations theory and comparative politics. Topics include the twilight of European colonialism (1890-1955), the British political system and the Irish question, the gold standard and free trade, the origins and conduct of both World Wars, and the postwar international order. (SS2) O’Dell.