Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• CAS IR 526: National and Homeland Security Law
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: limited to juniors, seniors, and graduate students. First-Year Writing Seminar (CAS WR 120 or equivalent) and CAS IR 271. - This course examines national and homeland security law as the balance between the state's requirement for security juxtaposed against civil liberties. We study the Constitution, judicial cases, and other primary sources focusing on specific topic areas. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing- Intensive Course, Ethical Reasoning, Historical Consciousness.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Ethical Reasoning
  • Historical Consciousness
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS IR 527: Political Economy of China
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor. First-Year Writing Seminar (WR 120 or equivalent). - Provides a historical and comparative study of China's rise domestically and internationally and introduces China's national power, local governments, globalization, finance, and strategic concerns. Students learn to evaluate scholarly and policy pieces, compile evidence, and write research reports. Effective Spring 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Social Inquiry II.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • Social Inquiry II
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS IR 528: Global History of Military Occupation
  Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CASWR 100 or WR 120). - Analyzes the theory and practice of military occupation from the Napoleonic Wars through the Russian occupation of Ukraine. Considers political, legal, cultural, and military aspects of military occupation through comparative examination of a series of case studies. "Occupation" is be used a conceptual category to examine diverse phenomena in nineteenth and twentieth century international history including the expansion and collapse of modern empires and the rise of national states.
• CAS IR 531: Intercultural Communication
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor. - Examines communicative problems that arise in contact between people from different cultural backgrounds in everyday life, social service encounters, and business transactions. Uses interdisciplinary approaches to study how verbal and nonverbal presentation, ethnic, gender, and cultural differences affect communication. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, The Individual in Community.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • The Individual in Community
• CAS IR 532: The Far Right in Europe
  This seminar approaches the resurgence of the far right in Europe since 1945 historically, reconstructing the ideology through its major thinkers, texts, organizations, and turning points with attention to broader social and political-economic context. Effective Spring 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU HUB areas: Critical Thinking, Historical Consciousness.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Critical Thinking
  • Historical Consciousness
• CAS IR 533: Contentious Politics and the Arab Uprisings in the Middle East
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120) - Analyzes divergent outcomes of the Arab uprisings by framing them along historic continuum of domestic, regional, and international political developments. Examines how linkages between regional and international states and actors have affected historical and contemporary statebuilding and transitional outcomes. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Oral and/or Signed Communication, Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Oral and/or Signed Communication
  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS IR 534: Contemporary African Politics
  Undergraduate prerequisites: First-year writing seminar or graduate student standing. - Exploration of challenges facing African states, their sources, and possible solutions. Focus on colonial legacies, political change, democracy and authoritarianism, political violence, the politics of ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexuality, and political economy, drawing on specific country cases. Effective Spring 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Research and Information Literacy, Writing-Intensive Course.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS IR 535: Diplomacy and Statecraft
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor. - Examines the mechanisms and process of diplomacy in historical context, to assess approaches to the implementation of foreign policy, analyze the success and failure of these approaches in different circumstances, and consider wider issues in the application of statecraft.
• CAS IR 537: Environment and Empire
  Undergraduate and graduate prerequisites: previous coursework in social sciences and natural sciences. - This seminar examines the relationship between imperialism and environment since early modernity. Taking a global approach, reconsiders core themes in imperial history - from maritime conquest, settler colonialism, and resource extraction - as part of the longue durée of human-caused environmental change.
• CAS IR 538: Arctic Studies
  Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CASWR 100 or WR 120). - The Arctic is home to 4 million people and has played important roles in global exchanges for millennia. This class explores the Arctic as a source of resource extraction booms, aesthetic currents, scientific advances, Indigenous knowledge, and unique governance systems.
• CAS IR 542: The Reemergence of Russia
  Russia has reclaimed its status of a superpower. Analyzes the careers of Putin, Yeltsin, Gorbachev and various oligarchs, and challenges such as public health, degraded environment, and organized crime. Examines US-Russian intelligence competition, including claims regarding Moscow's interference in U.S. domestic affairs.
• CAS IR 543: The Changing Face of Eastern Europe
  Analyzes domestic and foreign policies of Poland, (East) Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Baltic republics, Ukraine, and the Balkans from 1950s to the present. Examines positive and negative outcomes of reforms undertaken in Eastern Europe after fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
• CAS IR 544: Solving Humanitarian Crises
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor. First Year Writing Seminar ( e.g., CAS WR 100 or WR 120). - Humanitarian crises inflict vast suffering on people, upend economies, and threaten regional stability. This course investigates how diplomacy involving diverse stakeholders and tools can support solutions, even when conflicts evade comprehensive resolution, focusing on the Syrian and Rohingya refugee crises. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Oral and/or Signed Communication, Writing-Intensive Course, Ethical Reasoning.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Ethical Reasoning
  • Oral and/or Signed Communication
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS IR 545: History of Inequality
  Investigates the origins of present-day global inequality and asks how inequality has been understood differently over time through hierarchies of difference and categories of gender, race, class, time, land, population, capacity, geography, and biology. Effective Spring 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Critical Thinking, Historical Consciousness.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Critical Thinking
  • Historical Consciousness
• CAS IR 550: European Integration
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor. - Explores present, past, and potential future of the European Union. Investigates who is in charge and who matters in policymaking and politics. Examines a wide range of EU policies, including economics, security, and trade, and their impact on EU member-states.
• CAS IR 551: Social Europe: Identity, Citizenship, and the Welfare State
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor. - Meets with CAS PO 536. The past, present and future of "social Europe." Impact of European economic and political integration on national identities, cultures, politics, and citizenship; EU policies such as gender, human rights, migration and discrimination, plus the welfare state.
• CAS IR 552: Technology and War
  How do countries make choices between military technologies? How do they use them? What about emerging technologies? In this course, we examine the drivers behind countries' development of military technologies, how they operationalize them, and why they sometimes restrict them. Effective Fall 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry II, Writing-Intensive Course.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Social Inquiry II
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS IR 553: Digital Diplomacy
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: at least junior standing. - Investigates the growth of digital diplomacy. Examines the ways in which diplomacy and statecraft are being transformed by the use of digital technologies, focusing on how foreign ministries and diplomatic missions engage with foreign countries and populations.
• CAS IR 555: Guatemala: Revolution, Genocide, and Genocide Denial in Twentieth Century Latin America
  Examines themes of Latin American history and politics of the twentieth and twenty-first century through a case study in Guatemala, with focus on genocide through the study of the Guatemalan military dictatorship’s attack on Maya Indigenous peoples in the 1980s.
• CAS IR 556: Current Intelligence Issues
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor and First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CASWR 100 or 120). - Examines U.S. intelligence needs, with an emphasis on preparing for international developments in advance. Addresses issues of transnational terrorism and proliferation in additional to traditional concerns such as rogue states, counterintelligence, organized crime, regional rivals, and rising powers.