3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This course explores the role of emotions in international politics. Claims about shared emotion—including but not limited to fear, anger, guilt, humiliation, and compassion—are frequently woven into the public images and foreign policy narratives of states. This course reflects on who is making such claims, why, how, and to what effect. We begin with consideration of enduring puzzles in international relations, including the idea of the state as rational actor and the central role of fear under international anarchy, as well as a series of more recent, cross-disciplinary frameworks designed to understand states as sites and objects of emotional politics. The bulk of the course then engages with a series of closer studies on topics of contemporary significance; these topics may include: contestation over historical memory and collective trauma, performances of emotion in diplomatic summits, struggles for recognition and status, narratives of national decline, conspiracy theories and foreign policy, the role of humor and insult in foreign policy discourse, and the rise of populism and nativism.