Race and Global Politics: Re-imagining a Discipline

This course offers a multidisciplinary, collaborative and co-constructed pedagogical journey on re-imagining International Relations (IR) using race as an analytical, methodological and ethical lens. It is aimed at destabilising ‘settled’ knowledge, interlocutors, and scholarly positions. Students will be challenged and invited to actively shape their learning outcomes as part of meaningful inclusion and diversity in the study of IR. The course begins with an examination of how ideas of race shapes and is shaped by imperialism, violence and global politics through a close reading of selected texts, and by interrogating the complicity of key IR concepts on security, human rights and development. The course then takes on a ‘deep dive’ into thematic issues in IR such as transnational social movements, climate change and refugee ‘crises’. The remainder of the course opens up for critical dialogues on re-imagining a future where race is considered not as an ‘add-on’ but as an indispensable starting point for generosity and a more truthful accounting of IR.