The Department of International Studies prepares you for the increasingly complex and interconnected world of the 21st century. Whether you are passionate about human rights, media, education, the environment, or public health, when you pursue an International Studies degree at IU you will learn how to analyze these global issues through a multidisciplinary context and acquire the skills required of tomorrow’s global leaders. Additionally, you will develop deep knowledge of at least one region outside the US, and fluency in another language. An integral part of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, the department offers Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees as well as graduate degrees. Our students go on to meaningful careers in government, NGOs, corporations, foundations, media outlets, and policy institutes; but most importantly, emerge from our department as ethical citizens of the world.
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Featured Courses - Fall 2022
INTL-I 423 Postcolonial Theory
In this course, we will investigate the uses of post-colonial theory as a primary intellectual framework to analyze colonial relationships and their political and cultural legacies. Our discussions will take up some of the seminal issues which define the history of post-colonial studies, such as the status of the subaltern and the challenges of archiving subaltern consciousness, the relationship between colonialism and the intimate sphere of domesticity and desire, political violence and contemporary constructions of terrorism, and continuities and ruptures between formal colonialism and newer forms of imperialism. Readings will likely combine works by foundational figures in the field (Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Ranajit Guha, Gayatri Spivak) and more recent iterations of theory (Eqbal Ahmad, Ann Laura Stoler, Lila Abu-Lughod).
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INTL-I 303 Global Migration and Race
This course explores the causes and consequences of global migration through the lens of race and racism. The course will focus on how people move across state borders while simultaneously crossing cultural, racial, and civilizational boundaries. We will investigate a number of questions in the course: What factors compel people to move and how are they received in their destination countries? Are some immigrants seen as more legitimate, desirable, or assimilable than others, and why? How does racism against immigrants in Europe and the US emerge as part of historical, social, and political processes? The course will be roughly divided into three phases. First, we will consider theoretical explanations for mobility and displacement as well as ways to think about the development processes that spur migration. The second part of the course will introduce theories of race, ethnicity, and racialization with a focus on anti-Muslim and anti-Black racism. Finally, the course will look at specific migration corridors around the world and cases of raced migration.
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INTL-I 203 Global Development
Why are some countries rich while other countries remain poor? Why are some societies characterized by relative equality of wealth among its members (i.e. Sweden, China before 1978), while others are vastly unequal (i.e. Brazil)? How do current challenges such as globalization, democratic backsliding, and civil conflict affect global, national, and local efforts at facilitating development? Students will learn about the post-WWII global architecture surrounding international development projects, study both institutional and behavioral factors that influence development outcomes, and use theory and empirical observation to generate insight into the enduring challenges of development as well as the most promising pathways toward development at local, national, and global levels. I-203 is the core course for the International Studies thematic concentration in Global Development.
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INTL-I 302 Global Healing
This seminar will explore identity as a mobilizing force among those in settler colonial states who hope to share commitments to social, environmental, and climate action across cultures, histories, and projects. Telling stories from Hawai, Siberia, and Canada, three book-writers will guide us along pathways of metamorphosis, alliance, and critical poetic reflection. Forging new insights through readings, writings, and dialogues aimed at global healing, students will actively engage their own experience to imagine new collaborative identities.
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INTL-I 421 Global Activist Arts
Global Activist Arts focuses on the relationship between art, activist politics and digital technologies. We will explore performances, occupations, and experiments that bring diverse people together in collectivities and social movements that are organized around globally crucial issues of our times such as inequality and the environment. Reading reflections of artists, curators, scholars, human rights activists and others, students will develop a language with which to talk, write and engage with art as a significant dimension of global politics. Students will be required to examine and enact particular instances of the interface between activism and art and the tactics that give it meaning.
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INTL-I 428 International Indigenous Movements etc.
This course offers an overview of the transnational social movements that led to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, and on the movements that continue to fight for its implementation. We will address the implications of UNDRIP especially regarding self-determination and sovereignty under International and Domestic Laws, natural resources development, access to land, reparations, and cultural rights. Through case studies, we will also address the systemic racism that Indigenous peoples face around the world, the impact of climate change on their livelihoods, and the numerous violence and challenges they face in living a life with dignity, and implementing and enjoying their rights.
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INTL-I 434 International Climate Governance
How is international climate policy negotiated and implemented? In this travel course, students form the Indiana University student delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We learn about the key components of the Paris Agreement, including their historical originations, their interpretations in case studies preceding the agreement, and in the document and its implementation. We learn about how people negotiate these issues in the two weeks that the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP) convenes by participating in these meetings [participation at the COP may be virtual depending on state of global public health].
Learn moreRecent Faculty Achievements
Huss Banai conducted an in-depth interview on the new government in Iran for Voice of America’s “Press Conference USA” podcast. It can be found here.
Sarah Bauerle Danzman presented her co-authored, NSF-funded work at the American Political Science Association's annual conference: Public-Private Partnerships? The Social Connections between Business and Government in Comparative Context.
She also presented Investment Screening and Supply Chain Security- The U.S. Perspective at Harvard's Program on U.S.-Japan Relations.
On Oct. 23, she presented her co-authored work: The Big Screen: Mapping the Diffusion of Foreign Investment Screening Mechanisms at the Annual International Political Economy Society meeting in Boulder, CO
Andrew Bell was awarded a visiting research fellowship with the University College London (UCL) Centre on U.S. Politics for the 2021-2022 academic year.
He also presented a research talk, titled “Norms, Socialization, and Restraint in War,” to the Folk Bernadette Academy (the Swedish government international aid and development agency) on June 17, 2021 (online). Additionally, he presented his research on “Socialization, Restraint, and the Combatant’s Trilemma,” at the American Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting in September 2021 (online panel).
Purnima Bose gave an invited talk, “Withdrawal Narratives: Afghanistan, the US, and the ‘End’ of the Forever War,” at Purdue University Fort Wayne, as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Lecturer Series on October 13, 2021. She also guest-lectured in a mass communications and an introduction to news writing classes.
On September 30, she also gave a talk for the Hutton Honors College Series on “September 11, 2001-2021: Reflections Twenty Years After the Attacks.”
On October 21, Nick Cullather moderated a discussion on the Rio Grande in the “Big Rivers in International Politics series sponsored by the Diplomatische Akademie Wien. It can be viewed here.
Hamid Ekbia was a Panelist on “The Crisis of AI” at the 4s Conference (Society of the Social Studies of Science) in Toronto on Oct. 8 (online), a Panelist on “Best Practices of Hybrid Workshops” at the Computing Community Consortium in Washington DC. On Oct. 14-15, and an Invited Speaker on “Paradigm and Possibility” for the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels on Oct. 27.
Kate Hunt presented at the American Political Science Association Conference in early October. The presentation was about her forthcoming article on abortion activism on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic and was part of a panel featuring articles that will appear in a special issue on "Pandemic Politics" in the journal Perspectives on Politics.
Shruti Rana was a Moderator for the Comparative Perspectives Panel at the Conference on Extraterritoriality in International Law held by the Maurer School of Law and Utrecht University on September 17, 2021, and a Panelist at the Symposium on the Unequal Profession, Southwestern Law Review, on October 15, 2021.
For Episode 26 of The Philosopher and the News, Bill Scheuerman's presented his podcast, "William Scheuerman & Climate Activism"
He also participated in Episode 16 of The City Politics Podcast, entitled The Climate Emergency and Civil Disobedience.
Publications
Keera Allendorf's paper, “The Rise of Sonless Families in Asia and North Africa,” was recently accepted by Demography. The paper is co-authored with former IU graduate student, Roshan Pandian.
In addition, she wrote a brief essay, “Why We Should Measure Sonless Families,” for WEDGE (Women’s Empowerment: Data for Gender Equality). The essay appears as a blog post on their website and will also be part of their Measurement Memo series.
Andrew Bell published “Combatant Socialization and Norms of Restraint: Examining Officer Training at the U.S. Military Academy and Army ROTC” in the Journal of Peace Research (2021).
Purnima Bose published a co-authored article with Mona Bhan, “Hindu Exceptionalism and COVID-19,” in Against the Current, #214 (September-October 2021).
Padraic Kenney published an essay, “Missing Pictures: Towards an Alternative Visual History of 1989” in Public History Weekly Vol 9, nr. 5. The English and German versions can be found here.
Justyna Zając published two essays on the EU-Russia relations in light of the September parliamentary elections in Germany and the completion the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Both were published by The National Interest in July and August as part of a symposium on European-Russian relations. She also produced and recorded two video lectures on Poland’s politics and culture for the US armed forces deployed as part of NATO’s Operation Atlantic Resolve and the US rotational presence in Poland.
Recent Publications by Faculty
Clémence Pinaud's book
War and Genocide in South Sudan, is now available through Cornell University Press.
Clémence Pinaud's book
Rebel Economies: Warlords, Insurgents, Humanitarians, co-edited by Clémence Pinaud, has been published by Rowman and Littlefield.
David Bosco's book
The Poseidon Project by David Bosco.
Bill Scheuerman's book
Bill Scheuerman edited The Cambridge Companion to Civil Disobedience, which will be published on July 15th.
Huss Banai's book
Hidden Liberalism, was published by Cambridge University Press.
Sarah Bauerle Danzman's book
Merging Interests by Sarah Bauerle Danzman is now available through Cambridge University Press.
Stephen Macekura's book
The Mismeasure of Progress, is now available through the University of Chicago Press.
Purnima Bose’s book
Intervention Narratives: Afghanistan, the United States, and the Global War on Terror, was published by Rutgers University Press. Her book is also featured on the Page 99 Test.
Bill Scheuerman’s book
The second, revised and expanded edition of Bill Scheuerman’s The End of Law: Carl Schmitt in The Twenty-First Century has been released by Rowman & Littlefield International (London).
Jess Steinberg's book
Mines, Communities, and States: The Local Politics of Natural Resource Extraction in Africa, is now available through Cambridge University Press.
Stephen Macekura’s book
The Development Century: A Global History (co-edited with Erez Manela of Harvard University), has just been published.
Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies