Vincent Ferraro
103 Skinner Hall
vferraro@mtholyoke.edu
538-2669
Purpose and Structure of the Course
This course will introduce some of the basic concepts in the study of world politics. It is a survey course and assumes no prior knowledge or experience in the study of International Relations. The first half of the course will focus on the traditional perspectives in world politics; the second half of the course will emphasize new challenges to the study of world politics. The course will be run as a lecture, although questions, comments, and discussion are always welcome.
Course Requirements
There will be a weekly quiz on the readings, discussions, lectures, and current events. I will take the ten highest grades from these quizzes (which means you can miss some or I will drop some low grades). The quiz grades will constitute 50% of your final grade.
There will be an exercise in navigating the World Wide Web. The project will count for 50% of your final grade. If you wish to see examples of last term's projects, click here. Maria Carolina Camargo, 03 (mccamarg@mtholyoke.edu) will be the student assistant for the web project. She will be available for consultations in 101 Skinner Hall. She will post regular hours for consultations.
Procedural Matters
The readings in the syllabus highlighted in blue and underlined are on the Internet and can be accessed at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/spring01.htm. There are no books to purchase for this course. However, you are required to keep abreast of current events in world politics, and I strongly urge reading a prominent daily newspaper. A subscription to a newspaper would be highly recommended. I will choose questions for the weekly quizzes from the New York Times Online edition which can be accessed at http://www.nytimes.com. The New York Times requires you to choose a user name and a password, but there is (as of yet) no charge to read the paper online. I will choose the articles for the quizzes from the New York Times email service that sends the headline articles to one every day. To receive this service, go to the "International Section" of the paper, and on the left column there is a box that says "Sign-Up for Email." Click on that box and enter your email address and every day you will receive the headline stories that you can save in your account with the URLs for the stories so that you can access them at your convenience.
My office is 103 Skinner, and my office hours at Mount Holyoke are Monday nights, 7-9 and Tuesday mornings, 10-11:30. I can also be reached on e-mail: vferraro@mtholyoke.edu.
January 29 Introduction
January 31-February 7 Realism and the Causes of War
Lecture Notes on Political Realism
Fyodor Dostoyesky, "The Grand Inquisitor," Book V, Chapter V, of The Brothers Karamazov
Some statistics from the Milgram experiment
February 12-14 Imperialism and the Westernization of International Politics
Lecture Notes on Imperialism
Some Statistics on the Extent of European Colonialism
J. M. Roberts, The Triumph of the West (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), pp. 13-33
February 19 Session on Building a Web Page
February 21-28 The Great European War, 1914-1945: The Struggle for Hegemony
F.S. Northedge and M.J. Grieve, A Hundred Years of International Relations, (New York: Praeger, 1971), Chapter 5, "The Approach to the First World War," pp. 71-90 and Chapter 6, "The Morrow of Armageddon," pp. 91-111.
February 5- March 14 The Cold War: Just War Doctrine
NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, (April 14, 1950) (Only read Section I)
Encyclopedia Britannica, Article on the Cold War
John Lewis Gaddis, "On Moral Equivalency and Cold War History," Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 10 (1996)
Lecture Notes on Just War Doctrine
March 26-28 Nuclear Weapons and the Recognition of the Limits of Force
Lecture Notes on Non-Proliferation
The Associated Press, "Nuclear History In India, Pakistan," New York Times, May 28, 1998
Arundhati Roy, "The End of Imagination," Outlook Online, August 3, 1998
Jaswant Singh, "Against Nuclear Apartheid," Foreign Affairs, September/October 1998
Suo Motu Statement by Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Parliament on 27th May, 1998
Ranjan Gupta, "India deserves a larger global role," The Pioneer, 10 July 1998
April 2-4 The Post-Cold War World: The Resurgence of Nationalism
John R. Bowen, "The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict," Journal of Democracy 7.4 (1996) 3-14
William Hagan, "The Balkans' Lethal Nationalisms," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 78, no. 4 (July 1999)
Slobodan Milosevic, Speech to the Serbian Nation after the end of the war in Kosovo, 10 June 1999
April 9-11 The Post-Cold War World: Economic Interdependence and Globalization
A.T. Kearney, "Measuring Globalization," Foreign Policy, January/February 2001
Peter F. Drucker, "The Global Economy and the Nation-State," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, no. 5 (1997)
Alan Tonelson, "Globalization and Trade: The Need for Debate," Current, No. 399, January 1998
April 16-18 The Post-Cold War World: Environmental Protection
WILLIAM K. STEVENS, "How Much Is Nature Worth? For You, $33 Trillion," New York Times, May 20, 1997
April 23-25 The Post-Cold War World: Economic Justice
Nancy Birdsall, "Life is Unfair: Inequality in the World," Foreign Policy, No. 111 (Summer 1998)
World Resources Institute, "Economic Growth and Human Development," 1999