This course centers The Expanse , the Amazon TV adaptation of the series of novels by Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, as the foundational source upon which to discuss concepts of international security: how would inter-state war look like where there are no physical territorial boundaries? What does state-based sovereignty mean in an inter-galactic space with a plurality of non-state actors? With the help of the Block Plan, students spend time outside of class to immerse themselves in full two seasons of the TV series and to ultimately work analogically : by comparing our current world to that provided by the fictional universe of The Expanse , the course explores how conventional security concepts may shape-shift (or not) in a space that is ‘similarly different’ from our own—close enough to our own world to create a degree of familiarity but different enough to trigger a sense of critical inquiry. [There is no United Nations Security Council in the United Federation of Planets (UFP) ( Star Trek ). Likewise for the continent of Westeros ( The Game of Thrones) .] Coursework includes creating a Defense White Paper from the perspective of one of the main entities of The Expanse .

Course professor Jiun Bang says: There is a delicate balance between creative destruction and construction. On the one hand, creativity and imagination are not free-floating concepts. The act of reimagining does not necessarily mean discarding (or worse, ignoring) all existing frameworks. After all, you have to know what the existing structure looks like in order to rebuild it, which means that it is just as important to understand the discipline of ‘Security Studies’ and its main contentions before proceeding to rethink and reevaluate what we think we know. On the other hand, we are not here to be complacent about the status quo. My hope for students is that , by examining the universe of The Expanse , it will challenge their own understanding about what is and is not working in the realm of international security and how to go about changing it.

This course is centered on race and politics in the United States context. Race has forever been a part of the political arena in this country—that is, there was no distinct period of “racialization of politics” in the United States. From the perspective of political science, our course topic is thus incredibly wide-ranging. In this particular class, we consider three areas of research and commentary on race and politics: racial attitude formation, electoral politics (campaigns and elections), and public policy implications. Given these focal points, we examine how implicit and explicit racial attitudes and structural and institutional racism affect the socio-political arena in which we live, the domain in which elections operate, and space in which public policy is created and maintained. We end the block by considering a way forward that includes reflection and action.

Professor Elizabeth Coggins says: In this course, students study the role that racial attitudes play in historical and present day U.S. politics, and then harness this knowledge to put Colorado College’s Antiracism Commitment into practice in the political arena. Antiracism is the active process of identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies, practices, and attitudes so that power is redistributed and shared equitably. My hope is that through their Action Plans, students come to recognize their own roles in generating feasible and productive solutions to racism and racial bias in contemporaneous public policy.

This course, focusing on coexistence and conflict in the former Yugoslavia, a region now often referred to as the Western Balkans, explores competing explanations for the region’s ethnic conflict and the post-conflict trajectories of the states it produced. In this class, we will look at a diverse range of critical frameworks for understanding contemporary, comparative, and international politics in the Western Balkans. In addition to understanding and discussing the politics of the region, students also gain a beginning knowledge of Croatian through language practice and text study.