War, Peace, and Diplomacy: Understanding Contemporary Geopolitics

Catalog description

This course expands on concepts presented in the introductory human geography course, understanding geopolitics and international relations through an examination of the spatial relationships among political processes and institutions. It explores the problems, promises and paradoxes of international violence and the efforts to address violence through human rights initiatives and international peace movements. Particular emphasis is given to developing an integrative view of how global, national and local scale processes interact to produce patterns of peace and conflict. The course analyzes how individuals, the state and other political actors engage with geography to produce violent or peaceful outcomes. GEOG 328 does not simply explore issues of violence and peace from a "top-down" perspective that focuses on the nation-state and international, state actors. Rather, it focuses on the multiplicity of perspectives and actors that come together to create violent or peaceful conditions. As a result, this course explores violence and the broader movement to address violence through human rights initiatives. We will explore violence and peace in the 20th and 21st centuries, the ways the organization of space and place is linked to violence and peace, and how international efforts to address violence and war are linked through time and space. This course also dissects the definition of human rights, the idea of 'just war' and the way peace movements may both sustain and undermine efforts at ending violence. Course Objectives: The overarching goal of this course is to educate us about the legacies of violence and the struggle to construct a more just and peaceful world. At the end of the semester students should be able to: 1) Define and articulate different notions of violence and recognize how the definition of violence is related to diplomatic efforts at addressing human rights violations. 2) Understand the relationship between violence in one area of the world and resulting broader geopolitical power dynamics, especially the human-territorial considerations of violence and peace. Learning Outcomes: At the end of this course students should be able to: 1) Identify and define structural violence. 2) Explain the differences between positive and negative peace. 3) Define human rights, and explain their connection to geopolitics. 4) Explain how truth processes work, and identify their strengths and limitations. 5) Identify how the definition of peace changes at different scales.