3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

The field of security studies, while a relatively recent development as its own subfield, is quite broad, continues to evolve, and draws on multiple disciplines. This course will first introduce students to some theories used in critical approaches to security such as Critical Theory, securitization, interpretive relationalism, poststructuralism, feminist and gender approaches, and postcolonialism. The course will then employ these different lenses to look at central security challenges facing multiple levels of analysis (individual, local, state, regional, international, global). Sample security challenges include identity and insecurity (to include issues of gender, race, and nationality), terrorism and political violence, border security, human trafficking, climate change and the environment, and food security. A key focus of the course is challenging ourselves to not take dominant paradigms and assumptions for granted, and deliberately connect theory with practice, with an overarching goal of minimizing insecurity in academic and practitioner environments.