Ithaca College

there are a few seats left in these POLITICS intermediate and advanced level courses. check 'm out!

POLITICS OF FOREIGN MILITARY PRESENCE

Prof. Kelly Dietz; POLT 40109   CRN 22893 Tuesdays 4-630pm

How has military power figured in the formation of the international system? Political maps of the world today are remarkable for their neatness. Bold lines mark the division of continents into countries, with no overlap. Bold labels identify the spaces created by the lines, giving a name to both the place and the people. Military power is also folded into this way of thinking about the world’s people and spaces: Countries have militaries, and relations among countries are based on the idea that governments control the use of force (military and police) within their respective borders.

This uniform and mutually exclusive “ordering” of people, territory, state rule and military power is taken for granted by most of us today, but to what extent is this a natural state of affairs? Topics we will explore include: race and the question of who gets to be sovereign; sovereignty and the question of who gets to legitimately wield military force; how foreign military presence was transformed from a hallmark of imperialism to a normalized aspect of international relations, and how imperial relations are reflected in contemporary foreign military presence.

Junior/Senior status and at least one politics course are prerequisites to register; please reach out to instructor if you have questions.

Laws of War and Disaster

Prof. Amy Rothschild; LGST 37500   CRN 222722  MW 4:00-5:15

The LEGAL STUDIES PROGRAM is pleased to offer a new course, taught by Assistant Professor Amy Rothschild, relevant to our current crises. This interdisciplinary course will be relevant to students whose fields include legal systems, public health, environment, international law/politics, and systemic inequalities. Students from all majors are welcomed.

LAWS OF WAR AND DISASTER: What kinds of laws apply in situations of armed conflict and natural disaster, including public health emergencies such as the Covid pandemic? This course will explore this question and more through a range of interdisciplinary theoretical texts and case studies of conflict and disaster from across the globe.

One LGST course at 200 level or above are prerequisites to register; please reach out to instructor if you have questions.

Indigenous and European Cosmologies

Prof. Naeem Inayatullah, POLT 35008 CRN: 22417 , TR 4-5:15 PM

We will aim to learn: (1) how to contrast and compare Indigenous and European cosmologies. By “cosmology” I mean the origin and general structure of the universe, with its parts, elements, and laws, and especially with characteristics such as space, time, causality, and the role of humans in the universe; (2) what happened when these cosmologies encountered each other in history; and, (3) what elements, if any, we can retrieve from these cosmologies for our current purposes.

Materials may include: Robert A. Williams, American Indians and Western Legal Thought (1992), Alan Greer, Property and Dispossession (2018), Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America, and Foster and Holleman, “Marx and the Indigenous.” This course counts as a Political Theory course for the purposes of the Politics major and minor, the Concentration in International Studies, and the International Politics minor.

 Please contact me at naeem@ithaca.edu.  I am happy to receive questions and comments.