This course has multiple goals. Some revolve around introducing the understandings, protocols, terrains of debate, and inchoate confusions that constitute the field of international politics/relations. For example, the course aims

1. To introduce students to different perspectives or intellectual frameworks for making sense of what conventionally has been called international relations (though many prefer terms like international, transnational, global, or world politics) and to cultivate skills in applying perspectives in aid of understanding events, processes, and/or practices;

2. To introduce some of the multiple forms of social science research and some of the debates about the nature of the social sciences;

3. To introduce the competing notions of power and explore their implications for analyzing world affairs;

4. To help students see international relations as an important study of a more general set of issues: the relations of self and other and the problems and possibilities of living with difference;

5. In sum, I hope that the lessons learned from the class will be (a) sociological/theoretical, in that we will better understand how the world works; (b) meta-theoretical, in that we will reflect a bit on how we study the world; and (c) practical, in that we will think about how we are to live in the world as it is and might be.

The course also emphasizes the development of skills necessary to intellectual inquiry (and perhaps life), particularly deepening reading, thinking, and writing skills.

This class employs an innovative system of qualitative assessment. Students take the course “S/SD/N with Written Evaluation.” This provides a powerful opportunity for students to stretch their limits in a learning community with high expectations, but without a high-pressure atmosphere. This ungraded course has been approved for inclusion on major/minor plans in Political Science, Latin American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Important secondary goals of the course include:

1. Familiarizing students with the various “languages” or “idioms” of conservative political thought;

2. Helping students understand the great political debates between conservative and liberals.

3. Applying conservative political frames and concepts to a range of contemporary “hot-button” social and political issues.

As an intermediate-level offering, this course is designed primarily for Political Science majors and non-majors in cognate fields (such as Philosophy) who have some experience in the discipline. The course has no pre-requisites, however, and is therefore suitable for all students seeking to satisfy an interest in conservative political theory/philosophy

For the course’s final class project, student groups of three, according to shared interest, will be assigned to a local, Twin Cities food organization, such as Frogtown Gardens or Open Arms of Minnesota, for a legislative advocacy paper and project. Students will then present their findings to both the organization and to the class at course’s end, checking in with that organization periodically along the way. This project is made possible and done in partnership with Macalester College’s Center for Civic Engagement.