Course Description:

This private tutoring course will focus primarily on three goals. The first is understanding the basic theories people have used to understand international relationships for centuries and continue to use and refine to this day. Realism and Liberalism, as well as smaller theoretical systems, are necessary to understand why countries act the way they do (and why they don’t all act the same!). To get an idea of how these theories came to be used and why we still use them, the class will also look at how they have been applied through history by focusing on historical conflicts and cooperation between nations. (The Thirty Years’ War, American Revolution, World Wars and Cold War are possible focuses, but if students have other interests, those can also be explored!) Finally, the real benefit of international studies knowledge is using it to understand global issues, so we’ll spend the rest of the course discussing and learning about issues that are currently in the headlines: Sudan, Ukraine, and Iran are possible topics, but this part of the course will also be dictated by student interest and the events that grab world attention!

By the end, students will not only know about international relations theory, but they will also have solid historical knowledge about several key historical junctures and a better understanding of the world and the direction it is going. Finally, understanding both the historical and present-day world from this perspective can help move a student’s understanding of history, geography, and economics beyond memorizing dates and facts and into building a coherent understanding!