International studies is an interdisciplinary major that seeks to help students attain a well-rounded understanding of global developments and trends and to prepare them to succeed in the globalized world of the 21st century. In addition to core courses in international politics, history and economics, students study a foreign language and choose an area of concentration in which they take a cluster of courses either on a geographical area of their choice or on the transnational theme of Human Security and Globalization. A key distinguishing aspect of the major is the comprehensive oral examination which students take in the last semester of the senior year.
On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome all those who have an interest in our department of International Studies (IS).
We are proud of our program. It has been a key program in the Dickinson curriculum for more than forty years. It was the first interdisciplinary program at Dickinson with a strong international emphasis and served as a catalyst to the creation of Dickinson’s first overseas program in Bologna Italy.
Despite that long tradition, the department has not remained stagnant. It has evolved with the times. Five years ago, the members of IS department proposed a set of changes to the IS major that were approved by the Dickinson faculty. One element gave the IS majors a new opportunity with respect to choosing an area of concentration. Before the changes, students would choose a set of electives about a country or region of the world, a practice that had been in place for four decades. Following the changes, students would alternatively be able to choose four electives that fell into a broad category we called Globalization and Human Security—the key feature of such courses would be that they dealt with issues that were transnational in nature and global in scope.
We were motivated at the time by developments in global affairs and as well by our sense that areas of concentration about a single country or region of the world were somewhat limiting. Furthermore, we were concerned that our traditional specification did not reflect ongoing changes in programs of study at other colleges and universities across the United States.
Thus, at the present time, all students must complete the following set of courses for the IS major.
- Two courses beyond the intermediate level in the foreign language
- ECON 111—Introduction to Microeconomics
- ECON 112—Introduction to Macroeconomics
- INBM 200—The Global Economy
- POSC 170—International Relations Theory
- POSC 280—American Foreign Policy Since 1945
- A course in diplomatic history, taken from HIST 358—European Diplomatic History; or HIST 382—US Diplomatic History; or INST 290—International Relations in Historical Context; or another history course approved by the student’s advisor and the IS department, such as HIST 383—Latin American-US Relations
- IS 401—An approved senior seminar in International Studies
- IS 404—Review and preparation for the International Studies Oral Examination
- Four elective courses selected in conjunction with the faculty advisor in one of three following concentration areas:
- 1. Country or Region of Specilization or
- 2. Globalization and Sustainability or
- 3. Security Studies
The changes to the IS major that were approved five years ago have begun to bear fruit.
The IS major shows signs of increasing popularity. A total of 33 students graduated with the major in 2009, and among current fourth-year students, 29 are on track to do so. There is a sharp increase in interest among the class of 2011, with 44 third-year students already having declared the major, and as of mid-October of this year, a total of 22 second-year students had done the same.
In spring 2009, the first cohort of IS seniors who had the option to choose Globalization and Human Security as an area of concentration graduated from the College. A handful pursued that option. As one would expect, they chose different electives than students who opted for the traditional concentration, with greater representation from departments such as Economics, Anthropology, Sociology, and Environmental Studies.
Although this is harder to pin down, first and second year students who are expressing an interest in IS with the new concentration also seem in conversations with members of the department to be curious and open-minded about study abroad options in Cameroon or Costa Rica.
The teaching interests of the IS faculty have begun to reflect the new area of concentration and students have taken advantage of opportunities in interesting ways. The research papers written in the context of Professor Kristine Mitchell’s autumn 2008 senior seminar “Globalization and Its Critics” had wonderful breadth. The papers written by students included topics such as “The Global Phenomena of Food Crises”, “Economic Globalization: Impacts on the Nature of Human Trafficking”, “The Changing Role of French Language in a Globalized World”, “Japan’s Globalization through an Economic Lens”, and “The Failure of 1980s IMF Structural Adjustment Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Result of Misplaced Neoliberal Policies”.
So too did the papers written for Professor Ed Webb’s seminar, “Empire”. The papers written by students included topics such as “A New Common Sense: United States Involvement in Central America and Manipulation of Democratic Discourse in the 1980s”, “China’s Growing Role in Africa”, “U.S. Imperialism and Africa”, “Missionaries of Empire: A Comparative Analysis of British and American Imperial Expansion”, and “Italy’s Search for a National Identity and its Parallels in Empire-Building”.
The changes in the global system suggest the ongoing relevance of the IS major. Over the past two decades, the people of the world have become more interdependent and the structure of the global system has changed. As a by-product of those developments, the nature of threats to the national interests of each country has become more complex. Furthermore, some threats tend to cross national boundaries and encompass the well-being of all human beings. Thus, the list of immediate and longer-term threats to the national interests of the United States or of other countries now includes interstate conflicts, civil wars marked by genocide, abuses of human rights, attacks on civilian populations by terrorist organizations, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, global pandemics, and the catastrophic effects of global climate change.
Furthermore, we in the IS department recognize that the growing complexity of developments in the global system, the sharing of responsibilities among departments of the U.S. government, and the ongoing reconfiguration of relationships among the various agents in the global system (nation states, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, multi-national enterprises, and so forth) has blurred lines. For example, one might legitimately include among the threats to the national interests of the United States the financial crisis and economic downturn of the past two years; indeed, the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States sits on the President’s National Security Council. Or as a second example, whereas only a few years ago concerns about global warming and environmental sustainability would not have captured the attention of “war-fighters”, members of the national security community now recognize that climate change can cause enormous stress on eco-systems and destabilize societies throughout the world, which in turn can be translated into various threats to U.S. national interests.
Essentially, the IS major with the college’s mission statement of a useful education within a contemporary context; indeed, one might argue that the IS major, existing as it does within the context a liberal education of the type provided at Dickinson, will be of increasing value to those who hope to make their contribution to society in a career with a global focus, regardless of the particular arena of engagement.
Michael Fratantuono, Chair '08-'11
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