International Studies Major

Concentrations

Cooperation and Conflict

This concentration considers fundamental theoretical and empirical questions about the study of cooperation and conflict in international affairs, including the causes of world wars, revolutions, and terrorism; the consequences of international and domestic actors’ attempts at reconciliation; the role of arms control, intelligence, international institutions, global governance, and grand strategy; and sources of state and individual security and insecurity. Every war is unique, every peace different, and students will have ample opportunity to study historic and contemporary cases from around the world. At the same time, students will approach war, peace, and security as general social phenomena and examine shared features and dynamics across cases and theoretical perspectives.

Ethics and Social Justice

This concentration considers religious and secular frameworks for relating ethics to contemporary international affairs, as well as specific areas of international politics where ethical questions are likely to arise, including sovereignty, terrorism, peacemaking, human rights, economic justice, and the use of force in war or humanitarian interventions. Students will have the opportunity to explore the role of religion and motivations of social justice in the interaction between state and non-state actors.

Global Cultures

This concentration considers two dimensions of culture-making and community in a globally connected world. In the “Cultures at Work” cluster, students examine professional cultural production, engaging with critical inquiry into culture as both a complex meaning-making activity and as commodities central to the global economy. In the “Cultures and Social Movements” cluster, students examine how communities and projects for change form through cultivating and deploying shared social, cultural, religious, political, and economic resources. Global Cultures concentrators may elect to complete a 1-credit elective internship either in the creation of a cultural product or in grassroots mobilization and other participatory approaches to issues of global importance and cultural representation.

Please note: Majors and minors who concentrate in Global Cultures should take only those electives that are pre-approved for their cluster ("Cultures at Work" or "Cultures and Social Movements"). Students can seek approval to count other courses -- including courses from the other cluster -- as electives by sending a course abstract and/or syllabus to the Director of Undergraduate Studies (Prof. Nakazato) before the first week of that class (and ideally during registration period).

Political Economy and Development Studies

This concentration considers the interplay between politics and economics in determining interactions among states, markets, and societies, both in the developed and developing world. Students will gain an understanding of the economic, political, and moral stakes in international public policy issues and develop the ability to analyze policy choices. A central focus of the concentration is improvement in human well-being, especially, though not exclusively, in the context of developing countries, including those in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Latin America. Students choose a cluster within the concentration that emphasizes either political economy (PE) or development studies (DS).  

Please note: Majors and minors who concentrate in Political Economy and Development Studies can take electives approved for EITHER the PE or DS cluster and count them for their own cluster.  Students can seek approval to count other courses as electives by sending a course abstract and/or syllabus to the Director of Undergraduate Studies (Prof. Nakazato) before the first week of that class (and ideally during registration period).