This is the syllabus from the last time I taught INR 5088 (International Conflict) at Florida State University. It will obviously need to be updated before I ever teach PSCI 5820 (International Conflict) at the University of North Texas.
INR 5088: International Conflict | ||
|
Dr. Paul Hensel |
Spring 2006 | |
The full syllabus for this course is now available.
Please note that we will not meet during the first week of classes, since I (and much of the class) will be at the American Political Science Association conference in Chicago. We will resume our regular schedule during the second week. The assigned readings for the second week are already available on my office door (563 Bellamy); please borrow them just long enough to copy them at a copyshop, then return them for the rest of the class's use.
If you are considering taking this class and you are not a Political Science Ph.D. student, please take some time to look through the syllabus from the last time I taught this class. Be aware that almost every assigned reading will use mathematical models and/or statistical analyses, and you must be able to read and discuss these materials. This class is an important part of the preparation for preliminary exams ("prelims") in the Ph.D. program, as well as an important part of the training for students who will conduct this type of research for the rest of their careers, so it will be taught at a very advanced level. Please email me if you believe that you can handle this course, and I will be glad to meet with you to decide whether the class seems to be appropriate for you.
Course Description
This course examines theoretical and empirical work on the causes and consequences of militarized conflict between nation-states. We will consider causes from a variety of different levels of analysis (ranging from individual psychology to national attributes or interactions and the structure of the entire global system) and a variety of different theoretical perspectives (including work drawing from realism, institutionalism, and everything in between). After taking the course, students should be familiar with the scientific literature on militarized conflict, should be able to evaluate this literature in a critical yet constructive fashion, and should be able to begin producing their own research in this area.
It should be noted that this will not be a history course, and we will not be discussing or examining individual wars. The assigned readings emphasize generalizable theories and quantitative evidence on general patterns of conflict involvement across time and space, and this will be the focus of our discussions in this course. Students wishing to study or discuss specific conflicts/wars or current events are encouraged to take courses from the History department or to form their own discussion groups, as we will not be discussing these types of topics in this course.
This course is an important part of the Political Science Ph.D. program, and will thus be aimed at preparing Ph.D. students to pass their qualifying exams and to become serious scholars of conflict. Students from other departments or programs are welcome to take the course, as long as they can keep up with a course taught at this level. It must be emphasized that this course will involve intensive reading of advanced scholarly research; nearly every reading that is assigned involves formal mathematical models, quantitative data analysis, or both. While students are not necessarily expected to be able to produce their own quantitative and/or formal research, they must be able to understand and discuss it. Students who are unable to do this or who are unwilling to accept the validity of quantitative analyses of conflict patterns should avoid this course, as they will be wasting both their own time and that of their classmates, and their grades for participation and for the discussion papers will reflect this.
Required Texts (not ordered from the campus bookstores; available at such locations as amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, half.com, or powells.com)
* Manus I. Midlarsky (2000). Handbook of War Studies II. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
* John A. Vasquez (2000). What Do We Know About War? New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
* Douglas Lemke (2002). Regions of War and Peace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
All other readings may be borrowed for personal usage from Dr. Hensel's office. Note that most articles from the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Politics, and World Politics may also be accessed online through JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org using an FSU computer. Articles published in the last several years are not available on JSTOR, but may generally be obtained through FSU's e-journal collection at http://www.lib.fsu.edu/?page=ejournals.html.
Course Requirements
(1) Attendance and Participation
Because this is a graduate seminar, the instructor will not run class meetings as a lecture; all students are expected to come to each class meeting prepared to discuss the readings. This will involve spending the time to read each book or article on the reading list, and thinking about what each reading contributes to the weekly topic. Class discussion every week will focus on such issues as the theoretical arguments being made (explicitly or implicitly), the empirical evidence that is marshaled to test these arguments, weaknesses or shortcomings of the work so far, and potential directions for future research. Class participation will count for 25% of the overall course grade. Note that coming to class late, or missing class without documentation of a very pressing concern, is completely unacceptable in a graduate seminar and will be penalized accordingly.
(2) In-Class Presentations
Beyond regular class attendance and active participation in class discussion, each student is expected to make three presentations to the rest of the class on the weekly topics. The presentations should involve identifying one or more important questions related to the week's topic that have been left unanswered or answered incompletely by the readings (and offering tentative suggestions on how such gaps might be filled in future research), and/or proposing some extension of the week's readings to a new question or area; the discussion questions suggested in the syllabus offer a good place to begin in thinking about these presentations. These presentations are meant to help focus the class discussion on new directions from the week's readings, and to help identify interesting directions for future research (perhaps even for this course's research paper). They should be written from a research-oriented, academic perspective, rather than a literature review or a Siskel-and-Ebert-style review ("I liked/hated this article"), and should be constructive; criticisms of assigned readings should be accompanied by one or more suggestions about how to overcome the problems, with appropriate discussion of the implications of these suggestions for the body of research. Each presentation should be described in a roughly 3-to-4-page paper to be handed in for evaluation. Together, these presentations will count for 15% of the overall course grade.
The following general grading scale will be used for participation and presentations:
* A to A-: The student made a very strong contribution to the course. Class discussion, comments, and/or presentations reflected a great deal of thought about the material, and were constructive (for example, not only identifying current weaknesses and showing how these weaknesses limit the current literature, but suggesting useful future directions that could help to overcome these weaknesses or to extend the literature in important ways).
* B+ to B-: The student contributed meaningfully to the course. Class participation and/or presentations went beyond repeating the assigned material, perhaps identifying weaknesses in the current literature, but did not make many constructive suggestions about how these weaknesses might be overcome or how the literature might usefully be extended in the future.
* C+ or lower: The student did not contribute meaningfully. Class participation and/or presentations were limited to repeating the assigned material rather than making connections or extensions, or was filled with mistakes and inaccuracies.
* F: The student was a net drain on the course, rarely if ever speaking in class or failing to make the required number of presentations.
(3) Research Paper
Another requirement is an original research paper, involving the development and systematic testing of one or more hypotheses on the causes, management, or consequences of militarized international conflict. This paper may be quantitative or qualitative in nature, depending on the nature of the question and the student's methodological training, but in any case it must be analytical and theoretical in nature rather than descriptive. The final paper must be 20-30 pages in length, and should be comparable to an academic journal article in style. Please note that this must be an original paper for this course, and can not overlap in any substantial way with a paper written for another course, such as the department's first year paper requirement; if there is any question please talk to me about it and bring me a copy of the other paper.
A proposal for each student's paper topic must be submitted to the instructor for approval no later than February 15. This proposal will involve a brief (2-3 pages) description of the paper topic, including a statement of what the student plans to study (the dependent variable), a suggestion of the basic theoretical logic and expectations (the independent variables), and a brief discussion of how he/she plans to study this topic (ideally including some preliminary notes about the data or other sources to be used). A research design (8-10 pages) must be turned in by March 22, involving more detailed discussion of the paper's hypotheses, spatial-temporal domain, data sources, and similar topics; at this point the basic ideas of the paper should be finalized, with only the implementation and writeup remaining to be done. The completed paper is due at the start of the last class (April 19), at which point each student will make a short presentation on his or her paper to the rest of the class. This paper project will count for a total of 40% of the overall course grade, of which 5% each will be based on the initial proposal and the research design. The paper will be graded on the clarity and contribution of the theory as an addition to the literature on international conflict, as well as on the appropriateness of the analyses as a test of this theory.
(4) Take-home final exam
The course will conclude with a take-home final exam, which is meant to assess your understanding and integration of the topics covered throughout the semester. The questions for this final exam will be handed out in the last regular class meeting, and answers will be due (delivered to my office in person or emailed to me) during the official FSU exam time for this course (Friday, April 28, between 7:30-9:30 AM). The final exam will count for 20% of the overall course grade.
The rest of the syllabus, including assigned readings, is available in the full syllabus (PDF format).
http://www.paulhensel.org/Teaching/gradconflict.html
Last updated: 4 July 2008
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