POL SCI 731 / Forgetting, Remembering and Finding Actors in IR

3 unit(s)

M. Beier

This course inquiries into the varied roles of actors and those they act upon in global politics. The course explores distinctions between subjects, objects, actants, and agents, reflecting on how these are socially produced and performed in contexts of contemporary global politics ranging from Indigenous peoples’ diplomacies to children’s rights to emergent weapons technologies. The often-surprising ways that the capacity for action in global politics comes to be claimed or denied are revealed and assessed. Working through critical currents in social theory, students will gain an understanding of how political possibilities are made or foreclosed together with political struggles around whom or what comes to be seen as an authentic and legitimate actor.