INTL 3000 - Foundations of International Studies

This course is designed to help students understand and explain the world we inhabit. It helps them imagine viable solutions to the world’s biggest challenges. It is the foundations course for the International Studies major, and it departs from two simple questions: How do individuals, states, and societies behave in the modern international system? How should they behave? To answer these questions, we will study the major historical developments that have structured the modern world, and critically examine some of the most influential theoretical models devised to understand that world. The course then links historical abstractions with human realities—structures and patterns with the particularities of lived experience. We analyze specific cases—each drawn from among the seven focus areas of the International Studies major—that dramatize the implications of the international system for individuals, states, and societies alike. Students learn to trace connections across regions, between scales, and through time. They develop a more thorough understanding of global issues, and they learn to think, speak, and write more clearly about those issues as they prepare to launch into the specialized electives that round out the major.