Academic Studies Relevant to Peace and War Studies

PSCI 102. Introduction to International Politics.
Significant patterns and trends in twentieth-century world politics: modes of conducting relations among nations, instruments for promoting national and supranational interests, and controls over international disputes. Emphasis upon episodes throwing light on the causes of war and the conditions of peace.
SPRING 2003 John Vasquez

HUM 161. Understanding the New Global Crisis
This is an experimental and interdisciplinary course first taught in the Spring 2002 semester in response to student demand for a course dealing with the background and consequences of the September 11 attacks on the United States. This course seeks to address the issues raised by these attacks from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Among the many issues addressed include the roots of the crisis, the history of Islam and the Middle East, American foreign policy in the Middle East, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the possibility of war with Iraq, and the consequences of the attacks for traditional American civil liberties. The course also addresses the issue of memorializing September 11, and attempt to come to terms with how and in what ways the September 11 attacks have changed the United States.
SPRING 2003 Tom Schwartz with Kate Daniels (English), James Ray (Political Science) and Barbara Tsakirgis (Classical Studies).

PSCI 220. Crisis Diplomacy.
Foreign policy decision making and strategy. Emphasis on differences between crises that lead to war and those that do not. Foreign relations of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan.
FALL 2003 John Vasquez.

PSCI 221. Causes of War.
Scientific study of the onset of expansion and consequences of war; conditions of peace, emphasizing alliances, arms races, and crisis escalation. SPRING 2003, FALL 2003 Richard Tucker, John Vasquez.

PSCI 222. American Foreign Policy. Critical analysis of major international and domestic factors shaping U.S. foreign relations as reflected in selected twentieth-century experiences.
FALL. 2003 James Ray

CLAS/RLST 224. The Ancient Origins of Religious Conflict in the Middle East.
Religious oppositions in the eastern Mediterranean world from the Maccabean revolt to the Muslim conquests of the seventh century; beginnings of religious militancy; challenges of monotheism to Greco-Roman civilization; conversion, persecution, and concepts of heresy and holy war in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
SPRING. 2003 Robert Drews.

HIST 283. The U.S. as a World Power.
From the origins of World War II, through the Cold War, to the present day. Relationships among foreign policy ideology, domestic politics, and social economic change. No credit for students who have completed 280b. SPRING. 2003 Tom Schwartz.

RLST 229. The Holocaust: Its Meanings and Implications
This course examines the systematic destruction of European Jewry and other groups during World War II, its background, and its aftermath. It addresses the attempts to create meaningful narratives about an event which appears to lack discernible meaning. To that end it focuses, on the one hand, upon historical accounts, case studies, memoirs, fiction, poetry, theology, as well as film and, on the other, the issues of history, memory, witness, rationality, responsibility, art, language, and otherness (race ethnicity, gender, sexuality) that they raise. Materials will be drawn from victims, bystanders, perpetrators, and their descendants. No prior study is presupposed of these events that have come to be known as the Holocaust. Selection of material and particular emphases will be guided by the theme of this year’s Vanderbilt Holocaust Lecture Series. Finally, the Holocaust has called into question the categories, institutions, and identities through which individuals and communities understand themselves and their world. In this course we will be doing some rethinking of what we mean by these categories, institutions, and identities, as well as of our place in the world as we ask the question: what is at stake personally and as a community in studying such events?
FALL 2003 Jay Geller