Spring 2008 Courses
Required Courses
Monday 4.00pm - 5.50pm
This course will provide a broad overview of major contemporary issues in the theory and practice of comparative and global development, with a major focus being on the relationship between development and economic globalization. The perspective is that of political economy and is highly interdisciplinary across the social sciences, particularly political science, sociology, economics, and geography. We will address the rise of the Third World and diverse national and regional trajectories of development; debates about economic growth and industrial development; democratization; social welfare policies to combat poverty and inequality; states and markets as competing development models; upgrading within global industries; and policy space for contemporary development strategies within global rules and institutions (the IMF, World Bank, and WTO).
Economics in International Affairs (NINT 5109), or its equivalent, is a pre-requisite for taking this course
This core course is meant to engage the core assumptions, systems, and logics that form the contours of the global and to provide a historically and theoretically informed basis for the further study and practice of international affairs. The terms “global” and “globalization” are relative linguistic newcomers for signifying interrelated processes that span cultures and scales. Though all movement of peoples from the earliest times can be construed as having a global effect in the most literal sense, and empires almost by definition have spanned distances and brought peoples into contact, the most common (though by no means only) referent of the term globalization are late 20th and early 21st century socio-economic processes. Our task in this class is not to exhaustively plumb the myriad interpretations of globalization in search of the true definition but to explore key processes from which our present era has emerged, replete with paradoxes and promises. In other words, this is not a class about “globalization” per se but about understanding how the global today emerges from the legacies of colonialism, the nation-state system, and capitalism. These legacies are our ineluctable inheritance, our daily reality, and the material we must work with and confront, especially for students or practitioners of international affairs.
This is a prerequisite course to the Practicum in International Affairs that will provide students with the opportunity to gain a systematic and comprehensive understanding of the key concepts and skills essential to effective program development and project management in international affairs. The course will focus on skills that practitioners need to be effective in a range of professional contexts and will provide a forum for exploring the trends, tensions, ethical dilemmas, and opportunities facing practitioners in the field of international affairs. Students must complete a minimum of 18 credits and declare their concentration before they begin the practice track in GPIA.
By examining key aspects of a project-cycle and case studies from a wide range of fields, students will learn the techniques and tools used in formulating and managing projects and programs for desired impact. At the end of the course, students will have developed skills in the following areas of program development and project management – strategic design, needs assessment, implementation, proposal and report writing, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation, advocacy and dissemination. At the same time, the course will also give students the opportunity to develop insights into what it takes to be a “reflective practitioner” in an increasingly diverse global context.
Monday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
Thursday 4.00pm - 5.50pm
Wednesday 8.00pm - 9.50pm
This course aims to provide students with a solid grounding in the different logics, methodologies, and practices of the social sciences. It also will help students to develop a research design which leads to a substantive research project, such as an MA thesis.
The course is organized into two broad sections. The first focuses on the philosophy of social inquiry, and introduces students to some of the fundamental questions about epistemology (the theory of knowledge) and ontology (the nature of things) in order to clarify our understanding of the growth of scientific knowledge. We will focus on the traditional view of science, as well as some critics and alternatives, including the positions of positivism, realism, hermeneutics and critical theory. Second, we will explore what it means to ask ‘meaningful’ questions, and what counts as ‘adequate explanations’ within such frameworks.
The second and larger part of the course will be devoted to the challenges and principles of research design. We will begin by examining the current mainstream approach to research design and some of its discontents. We will delve deeper into the issues raised by these debates through a closer look at the strengths and weakness of common quantitative (cross-sectional, longitudinal, contextual, quasi-experimental approaches, etc.) and qualitative (case studies, comparative method, narratives, historical and counterfactual analysis, etc.) research designs. Readings will consist of both critical discussions about, as well as relevant examples of substantive research conducted using these approaches.
Throughout the course, students will systematically develop their own research proposal, through class assignments and drawing on course materials and discussions. Students will work through choosing a topic, coming up with a focused research question and defensible propositions (theoretical arguments), conducting a literature review, and proposing a research design (case study, comparative case study, quantitative analysis). While students are not expected to execute the study during the course, the proposal must be ‘do-able’.
Tuesday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
This course aims to provide a working knowledge of the global economy and the conceptual toolkit necessary to address some of the pressing economic issues of today. In the first part of the course, we will focus on the economy itself -- its scope, its measurement, its institutional structures, its governance, and its evolution in a national and international context. In the second part of the course, we will examine the competing analytical theories of the determination of economic activity, international trade and growth, and how these have informed modern policy debates at home and abroad. Throughout the course, we will address the various specific challenges that national governments and international organizations face at every turn, and evaluate the arguments and methods by which they have proposed to resolve them.
The Practicum in International Affairs (PIA), as a capstone course, will provide students the opportunity to apply what they have learned from their course work, internships, summer programs, and past experience to consulting assignments with a wide range or organizations, as clients, in international affairs. Organized into teams of 4-6 people, as young professionals, students will work on discrete assignments of several months duration for client organizations from not-for-profit, public sector, private sectors, and multilateral agencies (e.g. UN).
PIA will be a faculty-supervised and client-driven learning process. To the extent possible, PIA will simulate the professional context, including its emphasis on deadlines and professional standards for work products, as well as the imperative to make decisions and recommendations based on imperfect information. It will recognize the importance of working closely with teammates and being responsive to clients in achieving the desired objectives of their assignments.
Tuesday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
This course will examine the analytical and empirical frameworks that underlie the examination of the global economy in contemporary debates. The areas to be covered include economic growth and development, cross-country flows of goods and services, finance, real investment, and people, market failure and state failure in a global context, and poverty and inequality. The material presented will build upon what was covered in Economics in International Affairs I.
(Pre-requisite: Economics in International Affairs I or the equivalent.)
This course is a requirement for those who have chosen the International Affairs research option. The course is designed to assist students in generating a viable thesis topic idea, preparing a bibliography, researching and writing a thesis proposal, and consequently producing the thesis itself. It is intended for this course to be taken the semester before the thesis will be completed.
Elective Courses
Tuesday 4.00pm - 5.50pm
We tend to assume that ours is an exceptional era – one unprecedented in its mediatization, unique in its digitality, its information- and image-centricity. But even if the conditions of our media environment are unprecedented, these claims of exceptionality are not new – nor are the practices of thinking about and theorizing media and communication. In this course we will focus on the schools of thought that have shaped the study of media throughout the 20th century, and the theories that have lain the foundation for media studies in the 21st century. We will discover that media studies, as it has come, and continues to come, into its own as an academic discipline, has borrowed from a variety of other fields, including literary theory, art history, anthropology, sociology, and history, to name just a few. And as we appreciate the interdisciplinary nature of media studies, we will also have to consider what distinguishes our field from others: What constitutes a medium? What is communication? And, furthermore, what is “theory” – and what good is it to theorize the media, or any cultural practice or product, for that matter?
This course focuses on political and economic transformations in the former Soviet Union since the collapse of Communism. It does not purport to offer anything like a comprehensive analysis of these turbulent revolutionary changes. Rather, it attempts to explore a few topics in some detail, with an emphasis on what social science and cultural studies can add to our understanding of events, and how these events offer opportunities to enrich International Affairs. While I would love to devote sections of the course to Ukraine, Central Asia, the Baltics and the Caucasus, the course will primarily focus on Russia. We will look in turn at the Soviet legacy, democratic institutions, economic reform, problems of state capacity, and Russian cultural heritage. This course will also be analyzing perceptions of what transition means both in a transitional country and abroad. We will consider an issue of democratization’s successes or failures from a standpoint of the International media involvement in the process. While there is a weekly meeting designated as lectures, I plan to devote large part of each session to open discussion. Students should plan to regularly read a newspaper or electronic newsletter from the region. Suggestions include the RFE/RL newsline, the Moscow Times online edition, Johnson’s Russia List email list (only for the hardy, you might also try its weekly cousin, the CDI Russia Weekly), or any of the foreign-language daily or weekly periodicals carried on the ISI Emerging Markets site.
Are we secure yet? Or does our increasing investment in security discourses result from a gnawing and growing sense of insecurity? Lives and livelihoods, elections, economies, industries, institutions and international relations revolve around issues of security. The concept is dramatic enough to warrant the use of military force and declare states of emergency, and malleable enough for political rhetoric and fashion marketing. This course will critically explore the concept of security as a central organizing principle of the modern social order and its contemporary trajectory.
This course concerns critical thinking about security-the active analysis, synthesis, and application of information in ways that interrogate and elucidate established ideas. This is not a course on security policy or threats per se, but about understanding security as a dynamic organizing category with (very) real world effects. It is incumbent upon the student to actively make connections between the themes and current events. The first part of the course, Ontologies of Security, examines the fundamental interrelation between security and social order, including classic political, sociological and psychological approaches that conceive of security as the underlying logic of modern society and the contemporary international system. The second, Security Discourses, explores critical assessments of conventional security frameworks. The last section, Towards an Anatomy of Security Today, examines current trajectories of security, including technologies of control and surveillance, networked organizational forms, privatization and commodification, and the shifting nature of emergencies and intervention.
This course is the foundation class for the Conflict and Security concentration.
Thursday 8.00pm - 9.50pm
This course is a joint review of one of the crucial issues the international community is dealing with today: The response to HIV and AIDS. The AIDS epidemic continues to be a major international health and development crisis with an estimated 4.3 million new HIV infections (close to half of them among young people 15-24 years of age) and nearly 3 million deaths attributed to AIDS in 2005 alone. This course aspires to analyze the driving forces behind the spread of HIV in the developing world and the way the international community has responded to it. In particular, the course will give the students an understanding of the state of the pandemic today and its possible course in the future; highlight the impact the AIDS epidemic has on different groups, such as women and young people, and the socio-economic development in developing countries; examine approaches and tools used in responding to HIV and AIDS; and analyze the response of different major actors. With HIV and AIDS being a multidisciplinary issue, this course takes a multidisciplinary approach touching on socio-economic, medical, public health, political and cultural issues, among others. The sessions will consist of a mixture of lectures, discussions, group work, simulations, student presentations and guest speaker contributions. Student participation and initiative are very much encouraged and welcomed. The course is structured around 4 building blocks:
- Basic knowledge of HIV and AIDS
- The impact of HIV and
- Global commitments, country responses and emerging issues
- Major international actors in the area of HIV/AIDS
Learning objectives:
Gain a sound understanding of:
- HIV and AIDS issues and concepts (the virus itself, HIV and AIDS terminology, driving factors of the epidemic, key populations vulnerable to HIV, responses and approaches to HIV and AIDS)
- Role and functioning of major actors in the area of HIV and AIDS
And develop:
- Critical thinking: What do you think drives the HIV epidemic and what should be done to address it in different contexts? Are the current approaches appropriate? How can the response to HIV and AIDS be made more effective?
Tuesday 8.00pm - 9.50pm
NGOs are widely acknowledged as having a crucial role in our globalized world. However, this work has not gone without conflict or controversy. The purpose of this course is to address the role of NGOs and a number of accompanying questions, including: How did global civil society become the solution to the democratic deficit of globalization? Has it been a responsible, practical and accountable solution? What are the dynamics of NGO interventions? Who are they accountable to? Who should they represent? We will discuss how civil society organizations became innovators in political, social and economic development, the roles these organizations play as they affect and are affected by democratization, war and the shifting patterns of national and global governance, and how the perception of dissimilar global agendas is creating different expectations and visions of civil society.
Special attention will be given to NGOs that work in governance issues (democracy promotion, development, human rights) in contemporary conflict and post-conflict areas. Two guest speakers—both with vast practical experience in Africa, the Middle East and the Caucus—will run a seminar during the semester.
This course will be a comprehensive introduction to the current debates about whether poverty and inequality are getting better or worse in this age of globalization. It will include introduction to key concepts, definitions, measures and theories. Course Outline: I. The debate about poverty, inequality and globalisation. II. Concepts, measures and empirical analysis of trends. We will discuss alternative definitions (income and non-income) and measures of poverty, inequality and development; and controversies about global trends in poverty and inequality within and between countries. III. Relationships – does poverty and inequality matter for economic growth, education and health, democracy, governance, and violent conflict? IV. Institutionalized inequalities within countries, including gender and cultural identities (ethnicity, race, and religion). V. Globalisation and inequalities between countries, including discussion of trade openness, growth and development and asymmetric globalization (inequality between countries). VI. Student presentations of case studies.
This course is the foundation class for the Development concentration.
In this graduate course, students will study the international human rights movement with an emphasis on the crucial role that media plays in representing and responding to critical human rights issues. In the last decade, the convergence of new media technologies with the human rights movement has had a profound impact. This transformation has enabled the globalization process of human rights activism through the rapid distribution of web-based news, research, and visual representation. Digitalization has also crossed over with traditional media (television, print, film, photography, and radio) enhancing both the production and the distribution of human rights reports. The emerging interactivity between producers and consumers of human rights information is also changing as people once considered as objects of human rights reports are becoming subjects who are now creating, manipulating, and challenging dominant paradigms of media representation. This growing diversity has had serious social and cultural implications on how human rights information is received, engaged, and transformed.
The contemporary mediascape of human rights has now become a sub-field of the larger movement involving researchers, educators, journalists, film makers, photographers, writers, visual artists, web designers, and many other types of media workers. This course will study human rights through the lens of the media in order to critically understand the changing nature of human rights representation and how to better prepare for becoming involved in representing human rights.
(Note: Depending on in-class film screenings, some classes may extend until 10:30pm.)
This course is designed to help international affairs students to intelligently handle the fundamental issues of today's complicated world. Placing a strong emphasis on the media and its culture, the course will introduce patterns of global and local cultural changes in the post-Cold-War world and the assertion of national, ethnic and cultural identities. The study of journalistic methods, interests and ethics from various countries will teach students to approach international affairs issues from a sociological and anthropological perspective. Assigned to follow current events in newspapers and on the Internet, students will discover how the media defines and controls the content of its reporting, which in turn affects what people learn about their own lives as well as other places.
This course is the foundation class for the Media and Culture concentration.
Monday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
The seventh United Nations Millennium Development Goals reads "Ensure environmental sustainability". Indeed, on the surface, sustainable development is a goal everyone could agree with–who would be for unsustainable development? But in fact, there is no consensus on the meaning of the term: some definitions emphasize the importance of preserving natural capital for future generations, while others aggregate all forms of capital together, arguing that our only obligation to the future is access to an equivalent capital stock. A related dispute is over what the relationship is between environmental sustainability and human well-being–as well as how the relationship may differ by gender, class, and other factors. And finally, there are heated debates about the appropriate route to achieve sustainability–for example, whether through neo-liberal trade policies, centralized governmental regulation, or decentralized local control. This course will examine these differing views of sustainable development both in theory and through the examination of specific development projects. Economists approach environmental questions through three differing theoretical schools: environmental economics, ecological economics, and political economics. These schools use differing techniques to value the environment, offer different understandings of what would be good environmental and economic outcomes, and advocate different policies to achieve sustainability. Underlying these differences are political economic questions of distribution of power and resources both within specific countries and globally. This course will explore the range of views, with an emphasis on understanding the assumptions underlying their disagreements, and on the policy implications of these views. Topics will include the "green development" policies of the World Bank, the controversial issue of water privatization, carbon trading as a response to global warming, the effects of neo-liberal policies on the environment, and cases of specific commodities such as gold and cotton which illuminate the problems and complexities of sustainable development.
Thursday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
The globalization of production and finance has put the regulation of international trade and investment at the center of policy debates in developed and developing countries. This course will provide a hands-on survey of the major debates in international trade and investment policy today, including debates over tariffs and subsidies in agriculture and manufacturing, intellectual property protection, international anti-trust policy, services trade and e-commerce regulation, controls on inward and outward foreign direct investment, foreign exchange market intervention, the establishment of international standards on labor and the environment, trade conditionality, and the relative merits of bilateral, regional and global trade and investment agreements. We will begin with a brief overview of theories of international trade and investment and of the welfare effects of liberalization. We then review some techniques for quantifying these welfare effects. Finally, we turn to a series of case studies on many of the pressing trade policy issues of our day.
“In feature films, the director is God; in documentary films, God is the director.” - Alfred Hitchcock
“The pleasure and appeal of documentary film lies in its ability to
make us see timely issues in need of attention, literally. We see views of the
world and what they put before us are social issues and cultural values current
problems and possible solutions, actual situations and specific ways of
representing them… Documentary film contributes to the formation of popular
memory” – Bill Nichols
More than ever, independent documentaries are being considered the source of knowledge and information about what happens in the world. Documenting International Affairs examines the power of documentaries in exposing facts around the world while challenging students to question assumptions such as “the camera never lies”; or “believe me I am of the world” or “what you are seeing is the truth”. How much does a documentarian manipulate? How much do viewers question what is being presented to them? Should they see documentaries as “the raw material of actuality”? (John Grierson) Could a documentary be considered on equal footing with a written essay or book, a scientific survey or report? Is non-fiction film practice the site of contestation and change? Does it address those questions that remain unsettled from the past and those posed by the present? (Bill Nichols) This course seeks to familiarize practitioners with the basics of documentary film theory (still itself in the making) and its practices and controversies in order to enable students to develop critical thinking regarding the documentaries they are going to watch. Documenting International Affairs also opens the possibility for students to think about creating a short documentary which would serve as their final project for the course.
(Note: Depending on the documentaries seen within the class itself, some sessions may last until 10 pm.)
The interconnections between conflict, development and peace are many and profound. One only needs to examine the current global context characterized by high levels of violent protracted conflict and inexcusable and rising levels of poverty and inequality – two phenomena that are often found together and that intermingle in complex ways. For many countries and regions in conflict and transition from war to peace in the Global South, the role of economics and development cannot be separated from understanding the causes of conflict and forms of peacebuilding that will endure. Where peace and conflict resolution efforts fail to address economic and social development issues – so often the roots of conflict – the result is the building of straw houses rather than the strong institutional foundations rooted in the human development needs of people, which are necessary for securing a lasting peace. From the other end of the spectrum, development policies and programs at all levels have historically generated ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, catalyzing and/or exacerbating social conflicts. In post-conflict and transitional settings it is vital to get new policies right – particularly those that can simultaneously serve to address peace and development needs.
This course aims to critically examine these issues, assessing the institutional frameworks and human capacities needed to further these goals. The roles and economic motives of different actors will be examined, alongside the peacebuilding and development dimensions of key thematic security issues such as disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration (DDRR) and security sector reform (SSR), as well as economic policy processes, such as the Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) - common in post-conflict settings. Best and worst practice cases internationally will be debated. Through examination and debate of critical and authoritative texts from leading practitioners, policymakers and theorists, students will come away from the class with new knowledge, analytical skills, and ideas and strategies for action designed to facilitate people-centered, sustainable development and positive peace.
Week 1: Peace, Conflict and Development - The Linkages
Week 2: The Economic Roots of Conflict
Week 3: Economic Policy and Structural Violence
Week 4: Globalization and Conflict
Week 5: Aid and Conflict
Week 6: Natural Resources, Conflict and Peacebuilding
Week 7: Women, Conflict and Peace
Week 8: Youth, Conflict and Peace
Week 9: Human Security and Human Development
Week 10: The Role of Economics in Peace Processes
Week 11: Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Week 12: Militarization and Demilitarization
Week 13: Peace and Conflict Sensitive Approaches to Development
Week 14: Non-Violence and Social Mobilization for Peace and Change
Wednesday 4.00pm - 5.50pm
This course provides an introduction to the major concepts and principles that govern the practice of global public health. The course uses a multidisciplinary approach to discuss the major underlying determinants of poor health and the relationship between health and political, social, and economic development. The focus will be on resource-poor countries. Students are introduced to the evolution of modern approaches to the setting of global priorities, the functions and roles of the major institutional players in global health, and the funding of global health programs
Thursday 8.00pm - 9.50pm
Fifty six developing country governments were in debt crises just in 1999-2003 and most are still working out from under them. An effective public sector is crucial, whatever development strategy is followed. This course proposes to study how public finance works and how it should work in developing countries. What principles should guide government budgeting? What processes should they follow? How should developing country governments decide what to spend money on, given limited resources and important development demands that fall on the public sector? How should they raise fiscal revenues efficiently and fairly? When should they borrow, from whom and on what terms? Why are they unusually vulnerable to debt crises? How should crises be resolved quickly and fairly? What is a sustainable public debt? How much can countries do for themselves and what support is offered by the “international community”? Is anything missing in the international financial architecture? Where does justice lie? These are questions that this course will tackle.
Corporations, Justice & Rights: Campaigns against Corporate Abuse in the Global South
Environmental degradation, abuses of labor, indigenous, and other human rights, and promotion of corruption are common vices attributed to global corporations operating in the developing world by their critics. Are such practices best combated and regulated through pressure tactics, certification and ethical consumerism, or other types of strategies? What roles do cross-border civil society activists, host and home country governments, and international organizations play in such regulatory efforts? How are we to assess efforts at promoting self-regulation of corporate behavior through voluntary codes of conduct and movements for “corporate social responsibility”?
This course will examine campaigns against corporate abuses in the global South in diverse issue settings and geographical contexts over recent decades. They will include banana plantations, garment sweatshops, and mining, and touch on regions such as Central America, East/Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Among the international regulatory instruments and bodies we will consider are the United Nations Global Compact, International Labor Organization, Fair Labor Association, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Kimberley Process (for conflict diamonds), and WHO International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.
The course will be run as a discussion-oriented seminar, and students will be asked to write a final research paper as well as critical reviews of readings.
Applied Qualitative Methods: Community Mobilization - Participatory Approaches for Preventing Sexual Violence
In partnership with the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault - Debi Fry, Chris St. John, Tami Pollak and Monica Paz
This course addresses community-based participatory approaches that are being used widely in international development, human-rights, public health and the social justice fields. These tools provide the flexibility to allow for research or as tools for community mobilization around a specific issue. This course will take you out of the classroom into a real-time, citywide project to engage communities in planning sexual violence prevention. Specifically, you will be working with all eighteen of the city’s rape crisis programs to help them think through these issues as they embark on a citywide demonstration project to prevent sexual violence in three to five communities in New York City.
You will be trained in conducting, analyzing and teaching community readiness for prevention assessments, oppression mapping, community asset mapping, community mobilization and other community-based participatory tools. Learning these skills will serve you well in any future work both domestically and internationally to address social justice issues. Additional skills you will learn include developing train the trainer’s guides and teaching participatory methods to community groups. Classroom instruction will include several guest lectures from leaders in the field conducting this type of work and using these tools and approaches. Though the practical experience in this course will be domestic, students will be exposed to leaders in the international field who are utilizing these tools for a variety of social justice issues and also those working to end gender-based violence. In addition to a final paper, the culmination of your skills learned through this course will be utilized in a hands-on full-day workshop with community members
This course will give students the opportunity of analyzing and discussing the new and controversial political, economic and social situation in the region with focus on social programs and human rights circumstances. In the last few years, Latin America has gained an interesting momentum against the Washington Consensus. A growing group of countries, at least rhetorically, opposes the neo-liberal policies instituted during the 1990s and, instead, tries to implement policies favoring of social justice. There is a lively and expanding debate, with quite different points of view, regarding the seriousness, commitment, sustainability and implications of these policy changes. Latin America has had some of the highest social disparity indicators of the world. Many of these indicators have worsened during the 1990s. Somewhat paradoxically, Latin America also has a long history in implementing social policies. The objective of the course will be to analyze and discuss the social situation in Latin America and the orientation of social programs that are implemented at present as ‘solution’ for social inequalities.
The course will be structured in three consecutive segments. First, we will analyze the mainstream thinking on these issues in Latin America, including distribution and redistribution policies, education, health and social insurance, and shelter policies. We will read Paolo Freire on education or Raul Prebich on economic development. Second, we will look at the ‘new’ orientations on social policy in the region such as Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs and debate issues of rights, citizenship, inequality and exclusion. The third part focuses on new social movements, recognition, identity, discrimination and use of natural resources with special attention to women, indigenous and environmental movements. The course will be a combination of lectures, debates and student-led presentations of case studies. Students will work during the course in a comparative analysis of selected Latin American countries.
Changes brought about by globalization have affected both patterns of organized violence and the reaction to them, providing ample opportunities for discussing the moral complexity of conflict. The laws of war that regulate conduct during conflict belong to customary international law, and the wide agreement that they enjoy is based on shared belief in their underlying norms. Yet, this does not automatically translate into compliance by states and individuals, even in the case of the very actors who have contributed to the development and codification of such normative rules. The focus of this course is to provide an understanding of the gap between laws, norms and practices of war, beyond the classic argument of realism - - i.e. interest and power always trump ethics - and beyond a static understanding of the rules of conduct in wars. The course addresses the dynamic role of norms as interests, and norm entrepreneurs such as non-state actors, through a mix of theoretical discussions and case-studies.
The following themes will be addressed: Conflicting norms on "just war" (holy war, Jihad, resistance and humanitarian intervention); Normative arguments used to justify behavior that is contrary to customary international law (collateral damage, precision killing, aerial bombardments, and lesser evil, proportionality, protection of civilians and ban on torture); Expanding the range of norms in the laws of war (rape as a war crime); The internationalization of justice on war crimes and the boomerang effect of the justice cascade; and the enlarging the theatre of justice on war crimes (politics of reparation and reconciliation).
Globalization entails not only flows and dispersion, but also centralization of key command functions in certain cities. This course will examine “global cities” like New York and London as well as others that aspire to that position. Cities like Dubai, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Shanghai, and Sao Paulo have been working hard to consolidate their status as “gateway cities”: nodes of finance, business, and high-end services within their respective geographical areas. Competing with other cities in the region and sometimes beyond it, these cities have developed highly entrepreneurial styles of urban management designed to attract the globalizing elite: the corporate branch, the affluent expatriate, and the worldly business executive. This course will explore how, in the process of vying for gateway city status, theses cities transform not only the geography of globalization, but also the configuration and function of urban spaces.
Monday 8.00pm - 9.50pm
This course will examine the role of media, information technology and communications in social, political and economic development. In particular, the course will examine topics including intellectual property and innovation, technology standards as regulation, mobile and wireless networks, Internet governance, digital inclusion, privacy and security, and related international legal and policy issues. The readings will address the tension between the globalization and harmonization of trade, telecommunications and intellectual property regimes with the need for flexible, local policies that leverage open tools, resources and systems for the purposes of improving health, education and human development.
International security during the twentieth century was largely dominated by concern for the causes and effects of war and conflict between nation-states. Today, security concerns are formulated in accordance with the assumption that war and conflict result from sources lying outside the bounds of the nation-state. This course will investigate this shift in the way that national-security is formulated. To do so, we will turn to the documentation of 1) the ways in which nation-states have had recourse to private – as opposed to public – security forces, 2) the increasing privatization of security forces and concomitant recourse to a security industry, and 3) recent trans-border war economies. We will examine the extent to which these various processes either undermine state sovereignty or arise from the very actions or workings of the state itself. Ultimately, review of various cases involving civil war, warlord formations, and war economies will help us to understand how the classical representation of sovereignty fails to grasp the dynamics of these situations.
This class examines refugee protection and migrants’ rights in the context of increased migration enforcement and interception measures. States are adopting more aggressive migration “enforcement” strategies, a trend that has only escalated in recent years as increased emphasis is placed on border security. Asylum seekers and migrants are vulnerable to the actions of smugglers and traffickers. Some have died in dangerous efforts to reach Europe or the United States by sea. The class will examine issues relating to the “asylum-migration nexus,” including states' obligations to protect the human rights of migrants and adhere to the relevant obligations of nonrefoulement under international refugee and human rights law. The class will examine a series of specific migration/asylum case studies in depth: including the U.S. interdiction of Haitians and Cubans; Australia, Indonesia and the so-called "Pacific Solution," the efforts of migrants and asylum seekers to reach Europe from North Africa via the Mediterranean; and the U.S.-Mexico border and issues of migration via Central America. A prior course in human rights is highly recommended.
Should societies confront the legacies of past human rights abuse or atrocity? If so, how? What policy options are open to successor regimes during a post-transition or post-conflict period? How do these policy options relate to broader goals, such as peace, stability, or democracy? This course seeks to answer these questions. The course begins with an exploration of why, or even if, societies should confront past human rights abuse and atrocity. Drawing on film and literature, as well as accounts by victims and arguments by victim movements, the course examines arguments bout justice and democracy-building that have been advanced to support the field of transitional justice. The course then examines the main strategies that have emerged for an engagement with the past. These include: (1) prosecuting the offenders, from Germany’s Adolf Eichmann, to Chile’s General Pinochet, to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, including through international tribunals or “hybrid” (mixed) tribunals such as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia; (2) developing truth commissions (such as in Chile, South Africa, Peru, and Sierra Leone), or other (e.g. non-official) forms of truth-telling; (3) establishing reparations programs (including the possibility of reparations for slavery in the USA); (4) launching of larger-scale institutional reforms (such as police reform or security sector reform in countries such as Northern Ireland, East Germany, and Iraq); and (5) the building of memorials and recapturing public spaces to create social dialogue (in Argentina, Cambodia, East Timor). The theme of “reconciliation” will also be discussed throughout the course.
“The risk society is thus not a revolutionary society, but more than that, a catastrophic society. In it the state of emergency threatens to become the normal state.”
Ulrich Beck – Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity
This seminar examines the growing importance of emergency response and intervention in multiple areas of international activity, including global health crises, conflict management, natural disaster response, and economic development. We will consider various theoretical approaches to these problems developed in social science literatures on emergency, risk, and related topics, and will attempt to bring them into communication with literature about the changing missions and strategic frameworks of key international organizations (such as the WHO, the World Bank, the UN, humanitarian organizations) or national organizations that act internationally (national aid organizations and the US military, for example). In each of these areas we will ask questions such as: Is there a global understanding and imagining of international emergencies? What are the conventions and ethical imperatives governing international response to global emergencies? What international and national organizations are shaping the understanding of the category of emergency and subsequent response? What concepts, practices, and techniques (resilience, preparedness, surveillance, logistics, and situational awareness) are crucial to activity in this area? What is the history of such concepts and practices, and how do they travel from one domain to another?
The class will be organized as a small research seminar that will focus on semester long research projects conducted by participants, who are expected to come with a willingness to engage theory and to play an active role in defining our curriculum. The course is divided into two halves. The first half of the semester will be devoted to background reading on theories of risk, risk society, and emergency, as well as some general background material on international humanitarianism and emergency response. The second half of the semester will be devoted to a participant-led curriculum that deals with specific areas of international emergency such as natural disasters, food crises, health emergencies, and environmental emergencies or crises.
Work for the class will consist of two parts. First, participants will work on one broad area in which practices of international emergency management are being developed, such as food aid, emergency health or pandemic preparedness, natural disaster preparedness and response, or environmental emergencies and crises (we will work collectively on the exact categories). Groups of two or three students focusing on each category will produce web-based information “sites” on these fields (we will talk about the appropriate platform for this – either blog software or drupal). These “sites” will have at least two elements: (1) A narrative about the field that describes when a certain problem was identified; what key organizations, meetings, experts, were engaged in defining it; what defining "events" brought a certain problem into focus, and so on; (2) A page of "resources" such as links to key organizations, experts, scholarly analyses, etc. that are crucial in defining this field.
Second, participants will write a research paper that focuses on a specific set of problems within these broad domains, such as a specific disaster or “crisis” (the 2004 Aceh Tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, the AIDS “crisis”), anticipated future disasters (pandemic flu, global warming), or considerations regarding catastrophe preparedness or risk mitigation. We will work collectively on narrowing these down to workable research topics.
Thursday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
If the institutionalization of power, the local anchoring of central government and the self-limitation of the ruling classes through the codification of law constitute the central characteristics of the modern, Western-type state, then state-formation in Africa is still underway. At the same time, after the domination of development discourse for many years by a “less state”-paradigm, awareness is now growing that sustainable development is not possible without a “sustainable”, i.e. more functional, state. However, there is a striking absence of empirically grounded studies of the day-to-day functioning of African bureaucracies. This course will discuss the “real” workings of states and public services, at both the central and local levels, emphasizing literature that combines institutional, actor-centred, and historical approaches.
Thursday 8.00pm - 9.50pm
In this tutorial, we will discuss texts which participants have drafted in the course of empirical research in or on Africa leading to MA or PhD theses. These texts could be project outlines before starting research, field or interim reports, or chapters of theses in gestation. In our discussions, we will try to give particular attention to the way these texts operationalize theoretical questions for empirical research. Authors will distribute their text to tutorial participants at least one week in advance. Discussions in class can be supplemented, on request, by a one-to-one discussion with the instructor.
Monday 4.00pm - 5.50pm
Gender is a social position occupied by men and women and an attribute of social structures including the sexual division of labor, normative heterosexuality, and war and militarism. In this course, we will explore these institutions and ideologies of gender and how they vary across societies. The focus will be primarily on how the state and labor market interact with family roles and relationships to uphold the sexual division of labor. We’ll study these processes in advanced welfare states such as the United States and Japan, socialist societies such as Cuba and China, and developing countries such as Brazil and Mexico. Some experience with gender or feminist theory is desirable but not required.
Wednesday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
This course provides students with a broad overview of social psychological research. Central to the course is the idea that human beings are not isolated entities who process information like computers, but social animals engaged in a complicated network of social relations, both real and imagined. Constrained by our cognitive capacities and guided by many different motives and fundamental needs, we attempt to make sense of the social world in which we live and of ourselves in relation to it. We see how this influences perceptions of the self, perceptions of other individuals and groups, beliefs and attitudes, group processes, and intergroup relations. Readings emphasize how various theories of human behavior are translated into focused research questions and rigorously tested via laboratory experiments and field studies.
This course provides an introduction to the policy and practice of education in developing countries. Students will become familiar with a wide range of issues and skills necessary to understand and participate in the debates revolving around the state of education in varied countries and regions of the world: Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and Asia. Students will gain a broad understanding of the economic, social, and political dimensions of education and development. The course begins with an introduction to the role of education in economic, social, and human development. Next, we consider the current level of educational achievement across the globe, the prevailing “diagnoses” of the most important problems, the most prominent goals for improvement (e.g., the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education), the politics of educational reform, and the most prominent and promising strategies for improving educational achievement and social and human development outcomes.
We pay particular attention to issues of educational governance. Throughout the course, we will concentrate on specific case studies and comparative information largely drawn from less-developed countries—recognizing that there is huge variety within this group. In addition, since many less-developed countries are now looking to the developed world for models of education reform and improvement, we will consider some of the most prominent reform models from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and how they are being adopted by less-developed countries. We will discuss the various actors in the provision and reform of education in the developing world: governments (nationals and sub-national); international multi-lateral organizations (The World Bank, the regional development banks, UNESCO, UNDP, OECD, etc); inter-national and local NGOs and civil society; communities, parents, schools, teachers and children; labor unions; etc. The focus of the course will be on primary and secondary schooling but we will consider higher education as necessary as well as the impact of labor markets. And while the course focuses on education per se, it is built on a philosophy that broader human development requires that educational issues be considered together with health, social protection, and other sectors.
Friday 4.00pm - 5.50pm
In the post 9/11 world of ‘war of ideas’ and identity politics, the role of media and culture in international relations has gained renewed significance. But advances in information technologies, global media networks and growth of local media industries are redefining international communication. U.S policy makers must respond to Al-Jazeera and other Arab media sources, totalitarian states must deal with communities of bloggers and ‘hyper-media’, while Pakistani cable operators take to the streets protesting a state ban on Indian cable television networks in this new world of international communication. Traditional understanding of ‘cultural diplomacy’ is challenged as political articulation of states and societies confront ‘cultural industries’ and ‘marketplace of ideas’.
This course is an enquiry into the role of media and culture as an increasingly important aspect in the political life of states and societies – both at home and abroad. Using local, national and international insights, the course provides a theoretically grounded examination of media, culture and power in international communication. Specifically, we will discuss U.S, Arab and Indian media environments as case studies. Major themes of study will include popular culture and political processes; cultural sovereignty; modernity; democratization; nationalism; and cultural rights. Theory will be connected to professional practice in terms of providing students with a vocabulary and analysis of the role and impact of cultural industries in contemporary international, social relations – and the possibilities therein.
We will discuss and analyze different mediums, including television news, talk shows and entertainment programming, newspaper op-eds and political cartoons, blogs, mobile telephony etcetera. This course will be conducted in a seminar style; use audio-visual and print materials relevant to class discussions and assigned reading topics; and include guest speakers, depending on availability. (Students are free to develop their individual interest in specific mediums within the scope of class readings, discussions and assignments.)
Architecture and Social Practice - Global Exchange: Mumbai, Hong Kong/Shenzen, Bangkok, and New York
There has been a surge in interest in the global exchange of students and scholars around the world, yet little discussion about what background and skills these travelers bring to the field. This course is designed to prepare students from AIDL, International Affairs and Communication Design for international exchange projects in grass roots social organization and design. The emphasis will be on developing rapid assessment techniques based on transdisciplinary skills culled from architecture, the social sciences and communication design. Investigation skills and contextual analysis will be in the service of developing immediate and practical design solutions for a wide variety of urban problems in the developing world within the dense discursive field of non-government organization practice.
Students will collaborate on urban research and design methodologies in preparation for field projects and the global exchange of information, analysis ideas, and solutions for today’s pressing social and environmental issues. The course will include in depth analysis of four global cities: Mumbai, Hong Kong/Shenzen, Bangkok and New York as regional urban ecosystems, as well as the development of methodologies of cross comparison. Three methodologies of comparison will structure the course: spatial heterogeneity, material processes and flows, and adaptability. Three disciplinary lenses - anthropology, urban design and communication design - will be presented, but the goal is to develop transdisciplinary and transnational practices bridging sectors that will benefit from new information and communication technologies.
Internship
Approval of advisor required before registering
Students in good standing who have completed their first semester may register for up to three credits through an approved internship. To qualify for credit, a student must work a minimum of 150 hours (10 hours/week during the regular semester or 20 hours per week during the summer session). Students may undertake non-credit internships at any time.
Students who wish to register for a credit-bearing internship should take the following steps. First, identify the organization, secure the internship, and obtain written confirmation of the internship. Second, choose a faculty advisor and write a proposal that includes:
a. the name and contact information for the organization;
b. the name and contact information for an on-site internship supervisor;
c. the period of internship, including number of hours;
d. the proposed tasks the intern will undertake;
e. the nature of a written report that the student will submit to the faculty advisor at the completion of the internship.
Third, submit the proposal to the advisor and the Program Director.
Applications must be submitted with enough time for full evaluation prior to
registration, no later than two weeks prior to the start of the registration
period.
Upon approval by the Program, students register following the standard procedure using the internship course number. An additional signed Internship Approval Form is required by the Registration office and is available at the GPIA office. During the internship, students meet at least once with their faculty advisor to discuss progress. Upon successful completion of the internship, faculty advisors assign grades of P (pass) or F (fail), based jointly on the written reports of the student and written evaluations of the student’s performance made by the internship supervisor.
SECTION A – Tim Pachirat/CRN 2294
SECTION B – David Gold/CRN 5362
SECTION C – Janet Roitman/CRN 5363
SECTION D – TBA/CRN 5364
SECTION E – Stephen Collier/CRN 5365
SECTION F – Jonathan Bach/CRN 5366
SECTION G – Nina Khrushcheva/CRN 5367
SECTION H – Vyjayanthi Rao/CRN 5368
SECTION J – Mark Johnson/CRN 5369
SECTION K – Sakiko Fukuda-Parr/ CRN 5370
SECTION L – Adriana Abdenur/CRN 5497
Independent Study
Approval of advisor required before registering
After their first semester students in good academic standing may register for one independent study. Students start with a problem or specific area of interest to investigate in detail, and then design a project with the approval of an interested faculty member who serves as the course advisor. Permission of both the course advisor and the Director is required before a student can register for independent study.
NOTE: Students planning to register for independent study must submit an application in the form of a proposal that contains: 1. the specific subject or problem that they would like to investigate; 2. the proposed method for investigating the topic; 3. a preliminary bibliography. These materials must be submitted to and approved by the course advisor and the Director prior to registration. Applications must be submitted with enough time for full evaluation no later than two weeks prior to the start of the term registration period. Upon approval, the student registers following the standard procedure using the independent study course number provided by the program. Upon successful completion of the independent study project, the project supervisor assigns a letter grade.
SECTION A - Tim Pachirat/CRN 2739
SECTION B - David Gold/CRN 2740
SECTION C – Janet Roitman/CRN 2741
SECTION D - LHM Ling/CRN 2742
SECTION E - Stephen Collier/CRN 2743
SECTION F - Jonathan Bach/CRN 2744
SECTION G - Nina Khrushcheva/CRN 2745
SECTION H - Vyjayanthi Rao/CRN 2746
SECTION J - Mark Johnson/CRN 4059
SECTION K - Sakiko Fukuda-Parr/CRN 4230
SECTION L - Adriana Abdenur/CRN 5498
Advanced Registration Option
Jonathan Bach - CRN 2388
Approval of advisor required before registering
Matriculated graduate students registered for fewer than the minimum number of credits necessary for full- or part-time status but who are engaged in approved “equivalent activities” may register for equivalency credit in order to maintain full or part-time status. This is intended for students who are completing their Master’s Projects or for rare equivalency activities that are an integral part of the student’s program and must be verified by an appropriate advisor or faculty member. Approval is not automatic.
Registration for equivalency credit takes place during the registration period. Students must obtain their advisor’s and Director’s approval. Full-time status for New School graduate students is defined as enrollment for nine degree credits per semester. Half-time status requires a minimum of six degree credits per semester. Some financial aid agencies and programs require that students register for twelve credits per academic semester; please check with Financial Aid. Also, international students with certain types of visas are required to register for full-time status (nine graduate credits per academic semester for graduate students). Please check with International Student Services.
Approval of advisor required before registering
Students who are writing a thesis must register for Thesis Supervision, a non-credit and no fee course, under the name of their thesis supervisor. In the same semester, they must also register for Maintaining Status if all other course work has been completed.
Section A – Tim Pachirat/CRN 5352
Section B – David Gold/CRN 5353
Section C – Janet Roitman/CRN 5354
Section D – L.H.M. Ling/CRN 5355
Section E – Stephen Collier/CRN 5356
Section F – Jonathan Bach/CRN 5357
Section G – Nina Khrushcheva/CRN 5358
Section H – Vyjayanthi Rao/CRN 5359
Section J – Mark Johnson/CRN 5360
Section K – Sakiko Fukuda-Parr/CRN 5361
Section L – Adriana Abdenur/CRN 5496
Section M – Michael Cohen/CRN 6805
Jonathan Bach - CRN 2389
Approval of advisor required before registering
All matriculated students must register to maintain status for all fall and spring semesters in which they do not take courses (does not apply to summer semester), unless they are on a leave of absence. Students registering to maintain status pay the Maintenance of Status fee, as well as the University Services and Divisional Fees, each semester. Students who maintain status are considered active students, even though they are not enrolled in courses. They retain access to academic advising, library resources, and University email. Students who register to maintain status after the deadline (for Spring 2008 - January 10th, 2008) will be charged a late registration fee. Students who do not register to maintain status by the Add deadline (February 4th, 2008) will need permission to do so. Students who fail to register for the Spring 2008 semester, and who have not been granted a leave of absence, must petition to re-enroll to continue their studies.