Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POL3264: International Relations in Global History

This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.

Module Aims

This module aims to broaden students’ understanding of international relations in global history, with a particular focus on the different ways of doing and thinking about relations across different times and places. It also encourages students to think critically about the ontology of IR and the epistemology of the discipline by exploring the international and its constituent parts in different temporal and spatial settings. Its research-led content introduces students to interdisciplinary approaches across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, to better appreciate the mutually-constitutive influence of complex systems on actors and processes in international relations. Finally, its range of assessment methods and in-class exercises aim to foster multimedia delivery and research skills, thereby equipping students with the skills to communicate and critically engage across multiple deliberative spaces.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

This module's assessment will evaluate your achievement of the ILOs listed here – you will see reference to these ILO numbers in the details of the assessment for this module.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to:
Module-Specific Skills1. critically appreciate the practices and key actors of international relations across time;
2. demonstrate a critical understanding of alternative ways of doing international relations across time and space.
Discipline-Specific Skills3. critically reflect on the breadth of history traditionally covered by the discipline;
4. demonstrate a critical understanding of the ‘international’ in relation to other social spaces;
5. display awareness of a range of conceptual frameworks to understand the complex and changing interaction between and across polities;
6. demonstrate an ability to problematize settled ‘truths’ and assumptions about actors, processes, and narratives;
7. demonstrate awareness of contingency in historical socio-political processes.
Personal and Key Skills8. study independently and manage time and assessment deadlines effectively;
9. communicate effectively in speech and writing;
10. demonstrate proficiency in the use of the internet, online journal databases, and other IT resources for the purposes of tutorial and assessment preparation;
11. demonstrate effective applied writing.

Indicative Reading List

This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.

ABU-LUGHOD, JANET. 1991. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

ACHARYA, AMITAV. 2014. Global International Relations (IR) and regional worlds: a new agenda for international studies. International Studies Quarterly 58(4): 647-659.

BHAMBRA, GURMINDER K. 2014. Connected Sociologies. London: Bloomsbury.

BUZAN, BARRY, AND RICHARD LITTLE. 2000. International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

COHEN, RAYMOND, AND RAYMOND WESTBROOK editors. 2000. Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginning of International Relations. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

CUDWORTH, ERIKA, AND STEPHEN HOBDEN. 2011. Posthuman International Relations: Complexity, Ecologism and Global Politics. London: Zed.

FRANK, ANDRE GUNDER AND BARRY K. GILLS editors. 1996. The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? London: Routledge.

GO, JULIAN, AND GEORGE LAWSON editors. 2017. Global Historical Sociology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

HOBSON, JOHN M. 2007. Reconstructing International Relations through world history: oriental globalization and the global–dialogic conception of inter-civilizational relations. International Politics 44(4), 414-430.

JACKSON, PATRICK THADDEUS, and DANIEL H. NEXON. Relations before states: Substance, process, and the study of world politics. European Journal of International Relations 5(3): 291-332.

KAUFMAN, STUART J., RICHARD LITTLE, AND WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH editors. 2007. The Balance of Power in World History. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

MANN, MICHAEL. 1986[2012]. The Sources of Social Power, Volume 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PHILLIPS, ANDREW AND J.C. SHARMAN. 2015. International Order in Diversity: War, Trade, and Rule in the Indian Ocean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

SPIER, FRED. 2015. Big History and the Future of Humanity, Second edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

WATSON, ADAM. 1992. The Evolution of International Society. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.