Sean Case
Peace Studies Coordinator
Sean Case is a PhD candidate in the American & New England Studies Program (AMNESP) and a historian of U.S. foreign policy with the main interest of bridging the military history and diplomatic history subfields. His dissertation “To Balance the World: The Development of the U.S. International Interest, 1935 – 1963” engages with historical actors from a wide variety of professions, framing them as “intellectuals,” and their adoption of balance of power as the United States’ international interest. It will examine how these intellectuals reconciled balance of power as both a concept and an ideology with the Realist principle of national interest. Following the format of a collective biography, it is ultimately an intellectual and cultural history of the foreign policy consensus that began in the interwar period and came to fruition with the early Vietnam War. The exchange in strategic thinking between military professionals, political theorists, and defense intellectuals figures prominently in this inquiry. Sean’s critiques of the United States’ militarized foreign policy developed as a result of his deployment to Afghanistan from 2007-2008 with the 82nd Airborne Division Staff. He served as the Deputy Chief of Plans during that rotation. Sean completed approximately twelve years of active federal service as a major in the U.S. Army in May 2015.
At BU, Sean served as a Teaching Fellow for the History of International Relations, 1900 to 1945; the History of the World Wars; the History of War; and the History of International Relations, 1945 to the Present. He also taught introductory international relations courses to high school students as part of BU’s Summer Challenge program. At the United States Military Academy at West Point, Sean taught introductory courses on composition and literature and served as co-director for an advanced composition course with cultural studies components focused on Egypt and the Maghreb/North Africa, respectively. He most recently served as a Boston University Center for the Humanities (BUCH) PhD Intern/Public History Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Summer 2020.