- Autumn 2024
Syllabus Description:
Topic: International Relations and East Asia
This seminar introduces students to historical and theoretical approaches to understanding East Asian foreign and security affairs. The majority of the course material will be centered on Northeast Asian countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea, with some coverage of other East Asian countries. By the end of the course, students will have a better understanding of how the region's historical background and IR theory can be applied to explain current affairs, allowing them to become active consumers of East Asian foreign policy issues. Students will also be able to critically discuss, extend, or challenge these ideas with reference to East Asian cases and present their own analysis on related topics.
The first part of the course will cover the history of international relations in East Asia, from the early twentieth century to World War II. We will examine how general IR theories, as well as writings from regional leaders and scholars, explain its history and compare how East Asian perceptions of the world and politics differ from those of the West. In the second part of the course, we will examine the particular historical developments in each country—China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea—in the post-World War II era. The final section of the course will address major contemporary issues in the region, such as the rise of China, North Korea's nuclear armament, the reunification of the Korean peninsula, South Korea and Japan's military armament, and historical/territorial/cultural disputes, and the emerging division between Russia, China, North Korea vs. South Korea, Japan, and the United States.
This course will be delivered in-person. My lectures will comprise about half of each meeting, with the remaining half dedicated to student discussion of the assigned topic and questions. Students must come to class having read all of the assigned readings and actively participate in class discussions. The final grade is likely to be based on regular seminar participation, review essays, and policy memos.