Sarkar’s Nuclear Governance Course Featured in BU Today
The fall 2018 IR 315/PO358/ HI335 Nuclear Governance course taught by Jayita Sarkar, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was featured by BU Today on December 17, 2018 as part of the series, “One Class, One Day”.
The undergraduate course, which will be re-titled as, “International Nuclear Politics” from 2019-20 onward, is the first of its kind at Boston University because it combines political, historical, technological, and anthropological insights to make sense of the challenges posed by nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.
The course covers gamut of issues including nuclear deterrence, nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation, the Nuclear Posture Review, nuclear crises, denuclearization, nuclear accidents, plutonium poisoning and radioactive illnesses, among others. This fall it had 40 students from all four years. The fall syllabus can be viewed here.
The course began as the result of a course development grant from the Stanton Foundation in 2017-18. Sarkar’s association with the Stanton Foundation precedes the grant— she is a former Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School during 2014-15.
Jayita Sarkar, an historian by training, is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. Her expertise is in the history of U.S. foreign policy, nuclear proliferation, the global Cold War, South Asia and Western Europe. Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Cold War Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Cold War History, International History Review, and elsewhere. Dr. Sarkar has held fellowships at MIT, Harvard, Columbia and Yale universities, and obtained a doctorate in International History from the Graduate Institute Geneva in Switzerland.