America in the World: Contemporary Power Politics on a Global Scale

This course aims to help students make sense of the confusing daily stream of headlines coming from around the world by providing the background and conceptual tools students need to understand their role as global citizens. The course introduces basic concepts of social science – theory, paradigm, hypotheses – and shows how the different disciplines of political science and history can be combined to explain global politics, thus preparing students to contribute meaningfully to contemporary public policy debates about American foreign policy and international relations.