Vincent Ferraro
103 Skinner Hall
vferraro@mtholyoke.edu
538-2669
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.
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). Due to the large class size, there is no possibility for make-up quizzes. The quiz grades will constitute 50% of your final grade.
Students can choose their final project which will count for 50% of your final grade. Students can either maintain a blog on world politics throughout the term or they can build a web page on a topic within world politics. For information about maintaining a blog, click here. If you wish to see examples of last term's web page projects, click here. The criteria I will use for evaluating the final projects are outlined in an evaluation sheet that can be accessed here. LITS has a special office to help students develop web projects for courses, and offers training sessions in web software. You can check the calendar for these workshops here. Submission procedures for the web page can be found here.
To view the web projects for this term, click here.
Procedural Matters
The readings in the syllabus are on the Internet and can be accessed at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/fall10.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 and post them on a blogsite that can can be accessed at: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/vferraro
My office is 103 Skinner, and my office hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30-12. I can also be reached on e-mail: vferraro@mtholyoke.edu.
Lecture Notes on Political Realism
John Gravois, "The Agnostic Cartographer," The Washington Monthly, July/August 2010
Benedict Carey, "Decades Later, Still Asking: Would I Pull That Switch?" New York Times, 1 July 2008
22 September--Realism and the Techniques of Control (1): The Balance of Power
Morton Kaplan's Rules on the Balance of Power
27 September Building a Web Page
Some Statistics on the Extent of European Colonialism
The Largest Historical Empires
Maps of War, "Imperial History of the Middle East"
Stephen Walt, "10 lessons on empire," FP Passport, 13 July 2009
13-20 October Imperialism and the Westernization of International Politics
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Top Ten Cities throughout History
25-27 October Realism and the Techniques of Control (3): Hegemonic Stability
Statistics on Hegemonic Predominance
Daniel
Drezner, "The United States flunks hegemonic stability theory," FP
Passport, 8 March 2009
1-3 November 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.
The Growth of Non-Liberal Regimes in the Interwar Period
Lecture Notes on Just War Doctrine
NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, (April 14, 1950)
Lecture Notes on Non-Proliferation
Nuclear Arsenals, early-1990s and projected to 2012
Jorn
Madslien, "Military spending sets new record," BBC News, 8
June 2009
James F. Hoge, Jr., "A Global Power Shift in the Making," Foreign Affairs, July/August 2004
Lecture Notes on the Responsiblity to Protect
Adam Curtis, "Goodies and Baddies," BBC News, 28 March 2011
Levels of World Economic Performance, 1500-1992
The Ten Leading Economies in 1820 and 1992
Vincent Ferraro, "Dependency Theory: An Introduction," July 1996
For Reference: "The Human Toll of Climate Change," Map prepared by Reece Rushing and Sarah Dreier, development by Evan Hensleigh, Science Progress
John M. Broder, "Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security," New York Times, 8 August 2009
AFP, "US heat wave just preview of future: study," 11 August 2010
13 December Conclusion