IAFS 1000: Global Issues and International Affairs

Professor Chester

Fall 2009

Syllabus

Course Readings

• Most readings available in packet at CU Bookstore
  
• Aug 30
  • CU Honor Code Information on Violations
  • Sources: Their Use and Acknowledgement
  • Permissible and Impermissible Use of Texts
• Sept 15
  • Piers Brendon reading available on e-reserve (see also this short interview with Brendon)

Announcements

• Revised syllabus here
• Student-generated midterm reviewA, reviewB; reviewC, reviewD, and reviewE; see also FAQs (not to be regarded as exhaustive; thanks to all those who contributed to these guides)
• What to do if you miss class (hint: don't email your professor to ask, "Did I miss anything?")
• Interesting recent articles
  • Henry Kissinger on the war in Afghanistan (Newsweek; includes some discussion of analogies)
  • Sorley, "The Vietnam War We Ignore" (NYT)
    
• Lecture outlines (available online after class; for copyright reasons, images used in class may not be posted here)
• 25 Aug: Introduction
  
• 27 Aug: Imperialism and Decolonization in International Affairs
• 1 Sep: Analogy
• 3 Sep: US an Empire?
  
• 8 Sep: EIC in South Asia
• 10 Sep: Education and the Census in Colonial South Asia
• 15 Sep: Nationalism and Independence in South Asia
• 17 Sep: guest lecture by Dave Citron (Office of Bilateral Trade Affairs, US State Department)
• 22 Sep: Nuclear proliferation (see also Newsweek's "Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb" and Time's Want Peace? Give a Nuke the Nobel)
• 24 Sep: Nuclear South Asia
• 29 Sep: European expansion in the Middle East (see also this NYT article on Turkish-Armenian relations)
• 1 Oct: The Palestine Mandate
• 6 Oct: The Palestine Mandate and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• 8 Oct: Algerian Decolonization
• 13/15 Oct: Introduction to "The Battle of Algiers"
• 20 Oct: Iraq and the Counterinsurgency Debate (see also this Foreign Affairs review of the reprint of the 2006 COIN Field Manual)
• 22 Oct: Midterm
• 27 Oct: The Congo
• 3 Nov: Rwanda I
• 5 Nov: Rwanda II
  • See also the Ghosts of Rwanda transcript
  • Listen to this actual recording of a hate radio broadcast (subtitles in French and Italian only, sorry)
• 10 Nov: The Problem of Mass Rape
  • "What is Sevdah?"
  • Susan Rice (PermRepUN) on Darfur as "ongoing genocide"
  • "The Genocide in Darfur Isn't What It Seems"
  • "Why China Won't Save Darfur"
• 12 Nov: Recovery in the DRC and Rwanda (Guest lecture by Eamon Aloyo)
• 17 Nov: Memory and Forgetting
• 19 Nov: Chile under Pinochet: A Case Study of Human Rights Violations
• 8 Dec: Archibald MacLeish and his wonderful poem "You, Andrew Marvell"
  
• Map quiz information available here.

Research Paper Guidelines

• How to Pick a Topic
• Paper Proposal Guidelines

Research Resources

• NEW: Research Resources for IAFS 1000 (many thanks to Jennie Gerke for assembling this page!)
• Avalon (Yale; documents in law, history, and diplomacy)
• CIAOnet (Columbia International Affairs Online)
• CIA World Factbook (for basic information on demographics, etc.)
• Empire Online
• EuroDocs
• JSTOR
• National Security Archive (GW)
• Project Muse
• WorldCat (union library catalog, useful for ILL; click on link and scroll down to "WorldCat")

External Resources (suggestions welcome; be aware of potential bias)

• General

  • Council on Foreign Affairs

  • Center for Strategic and International Studies

  • Federation of American Scientists

  • Global Voices (blog)

  • Human Rights Watch

  • How We Got Here (feature of PRI's "The World")

  • Informed Comment: Global Affairs (blog)

  • Médecins Sans Frontières

  • Muslimah Media Watch (blog examining Muslim women in media and pop culture)

• Africa: blogAfrica (collection of African blogs)

• Asia

  • Asia Source Today

  • The China Beat (blog on China)

  • "Obama's War" (PBS)

  • Registan (blog on Central Asia)

• Denver-area resources: Rocky Mountain Institute of International Education

• General foreign affairs: Hulsman and Mitchell, "Pax Corleone"

• Middle East (thanks to Professor John Willis for his suggestions)

  • Al-Ahram (blog on Egypt, general Middle East)

  • The Angry Arab (blog)

  • The Electronic Intifada (blog with Palestinian perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict)

  • Informed Comment (blog on the Middle East, history, and religion)

  • Just World News (Quaker perspectives on Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict)

  • Marc Lynch (blog on new Arab media, Islamist politics)

  • Michael Totten (blog)

  • Syria Comment (blog on Syria and Lebanon)

  • War in Context (blog on US foreign policy, Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as Afghanistan coverage)

• Military affairs

  • Institute for the Study of War

  • Open Source Defense Analysis (new blog authored by a recent CU IAFS graduate)

• Nuclear issues

  • Federation of American Scientists (explore this site for loads of material about all sorts of strategic security issues)

  • Fissile Materials (blog)

• South Asia

  • HimalMag (online magazine)

  • Tasveer Ghar (South Asian popular visual culture)

  • Teeth Maestro (blog on Pakistan)

  • War in Context (blog on US foreign policy, Afghanistan, as well as Middle East coverage)