Dea Closson- Final Post

I’m going to be really honest when I say I had no idea what I was getting my self into when I decided to join this class. I can say it’s partially because of the unnecessarily difficult registration process with Science Po and partially because I like jumping head first into academics without knowing much about it, but I had no idea what this class was going to be about.  The title “War and Peace: the Making of” greatly intrigued my international relations brain. I was assuming, based off the title, (and we all know never judge a book by it’s title, but yet I judge my classes by their titles…) that this would be a prescriptive International relations class discussing the different classifications for war and peace and how we can achieve those classifications.  This was not quite what I found on that first day of class. But that is for all the better; because this class is unlike many of the classes I have, and probably will ever, take. At George Washington University (my home institution) we approach international relations with practical, real world approach.  This class was very much out of my comfort zone and sometimes significantly over my head in its focus on more theoretical, philosophical takes on IR topics. But it is classes like this that are the reason I chose to study abroad in the first place, to get a new, different view on my studies of choice. 

            I’ll be the first to admit that my understanding of philosophic themes extends no further than the one philosophy class I took in high school, so reading our first two readings on Tolstoy and Foucault was quite the experience for me. But these first readings blew me away; Tolstoy and Foucault opened up a whole new way of thinking about everything I have been studying in university. To think about history, and mankind as something that is essentially constantly at war with itself, and to shift my classification of history from great men to trends was completely new to me. And then to top this off with Foucault’s idea of power, my way of thinking had been totally blown off course.  When I apply this new way of thinking to the previous things I have learned in my International Relations courses it has been eye opening the different levels of understanding I can gain. At the same time as this course I was taking a course on the Ethics of War, and a course on U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration and it was really interesting to discuss the same actions, for example drone warfare, in three different lights; from a philosophical, anthropological stand point, from a ethical, legal standpoint, and from a practical, policy standpoint.  Taking this class has allowed me to be able to question actions from a whole different point of view.

From a practical standpoint, in regards to the functionality of the class, I enjoyed the way it was set up. I wished many times that there been a way to overview the reading before we did them, or wrote our essays after the discussion, but this is only because I had troubles understanding the readings. This is obviously not the point of the essays, as they we’re supposed to evaluate our own comprehension of the readings, so I understand the limited guidance. To me the discussions we’re incredibly interesting, but as I was not confidant in my understanding of the texts I did not feel comfortable speaking up many times.  I think this could be remedied with a forced question set up, similar to Collin’s (sorry I peeked at everyone’s essays).  Overall I think the class was really interesting, and very much worth taking. I even thought the reading amount wasn’t that bad either. I learned a lot, but the most valuable thing I learned was a new way of viewing information.  It is through many lenses that you can get the whole picture.