- International Relations of the Global South

Catalog description

An examination of the Global South as a site of politics. Students question what is the meaning of sovereignty to those who have experienced colonialism and imperialism? How are the dichotomies of war/peace and failed state/good governance gendered and racialized? This course examines the question of what an IR rooted in the experiences of the global South and the non-West might actually look like. This course critically evaluates the development of International Relations and its Western-centric theories and explores alternative origins of the discipline and its views on the state, security, cooperation, and development that do not have their roots in the West or the North. Students will examine how the global South’s encounter with the “international” has been mediated by its invisibility within dominant, universalizing narratives and practices of the West and how to conceive of an IR that challenges and engages perspectives from the global South with mainstream perspectives.