Tomorrow (correction: I guess that should be today, actually) is the first day of my last semester as an International Relations student at Boston University. My courselist as originally laid out here has since been updated; the revised version with accompanying booklists and syllabi outlines (principal required texts only so far; there are several other shorter excerpts and recommended readings for most of the classes that I've ommitted) is below.


IR 380 - American Foreign Policy: Practice and Process with Prof. Charles Dunbar

This course is about how foreign policy is made. After a historical introduction, it focusses on the external, bureaucratic, societal and leadership forces that combine to shape broad policy lines and particular initiatives and that produce feedback influencing the future.
  • Center for Strategic and International Studies, Foreign Policy into the 21st Century: the U.S .Leadership Challenge, Washington, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1996
  • Hook, Steven W. and John Spanier, American Foreign Policy Since World War II, 16th Edition, Washington, CQ Press, 2004
  • Wittkopf, Eugene R. and Charles W. Kegley, Jr. & James M. Scott, American Foreign Policy: Patterns and Process, Sixth Edition, Belmont, CA, Thomson/Wadsworth, 2003
IR 508 - Islamic Political Movements and U.S. Policy with Prof. Husain Haqqani
This course studies the origin and impact of Islamic Political movements and their intersection with U.S. foreign policy. It examines the ideologies of various Islamic revivalist movements, their views of the West, and their contribution to the rise of terrorism.
  • M.J. Akbar, In the Shade of Swords (Routledge, 2002)
  • Karen Armstrong, Islam – A Short History (Modern Library, 2000)
  • Francois Burgat, Face to Face With Political Islam (IB Tauris, 2003)
  • Noah Feldman, After Jihad ( Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2003)
  • Gilles Keppel, Jihad – The Trail of Political Islam (Belknap Press, 2003)
  • Vali Nasr, Islamic Leviathan –Islam and the Making of State Power (Oxford, 2001)
  • Vali Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution (University of California Press, 1994)
IR 516 - Homeland Security with Prof. Arthur Hulnick
Aspects of homeland security, including information and intelligence sharing, the role of first responders, the structure and functioning of the system, and defensive and operational aspects.
  • The 9/11 Report
  • Arthur Hulnick, Keeping Us Safe : Secret Intelligence and Homeland Security
IR 522 - Ideas and American Foreign Policy with Prof. Andrew Bacevich
This course examines the intellectual foundations of U.S. foreign policy from the founding of the republic down to the present. [A lot of individual primary-source readings in particular for this one, many from the web, I'll post links to them if I can.]
  • George Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 (1951)
  • C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1956)
  • William Appleman Williams, A William Applemen Williams Reader (1992)
I've attached the syllabi for the three courses I have digital versions of at the bottom of this post for anyone who wants to see a more specific week-by-week of how the classes will go or the more complete booklists therein. (And for my Dad, if he hasn't seen them yet.) This semester I'm aiming to bring my laptop with me to classes far more frequently (as in, I don't want to shell out five bucks for new spiral-bound notebooks, so I'm going paperless), so hopefully having notes already on the computer will allow me to do a better job of sharing things from class with any readers who might be interested.