Contacts | Program of Study | Program Requirements | Summary of Requirements | Honors | Grading | Courses
Department Website: http://inst.uchicago.edu
Program of Study
The undergraduate program in International Studies (IS) draws on the strengths of the College faculty in a variety of disciplines and their innovative work in a number of areas of international relevance (e.g., human rights, international relations, globalization, transnationalism, area studies) as well as their groundbreaking research studies of development and humanitarianism, knowledge production and local practices, political processes of production and consumption, mobility and tourism, global popular culture, and embodiment and collective experience. The program is designed to attract students who are preparing for academic, government, nonprofit, or business careers with an international focus, and who value the benefits of study abroad and of cross-cultural learning.
The program is organized around courses drawn from two thematic tracks and area studies:
- international political economy (thematic)
- transnational processes (thematic)
- regional studies
Students should plan to complete their program within four years of study.
Study abroad experience is a requirement of the IS program. Students who are interested in pursuing the program should begin exploring appropriate plans early in their second year.
Program Requirements
Students must take the required thirteen courses according to the following five guidelines:
IS Introductory Sequence
Students are required to take a two-quarter introductory sequence, taught annually, in the field of international studies. One quarter provides an overview of contemporary global issues (INST 23101 Contemporary Global Issues I), and the other provides in-depth study of selected issues (INST 23102 Contemporary Global Issues II). These courses are designed to be taken in sequence. Students are strongly encouraged to complete the sequence in their second year, which allows them much more flexibility in selecting a program abroad in their third year.
International Political Economy Thematic Track (2 or 4 courses)
Nation-states and national sovereignty, relations between nation-states, political identity, development, conflict and security, and relations between states and international political (e.g., United Nations) and economic (World Bank, International Monetary Fund) organizations.
Transnational Processes Thematic Track (2 or 4 courses)
Courses appropriate for this track take up issues and processes that operate across the borders of nations. These include economic, political and cultural globalization, transnational and multinational corporations and new patterns of consumption, nongovernmental organizations, human rights, environment and ecology, media and the arts.
Regional Studies Track (3 courses)
Either three courses in one area of the world (but no more than two from the same country); or two courses in one area and one course in another area. Students majoring in IS may count one civilization studies course that bears a University of Chicago course number that is not used to meet the general education requirement in civilization studies.
Literature courses taken at the level of third-year language or above may count toward the area and civilization track. To be considered at the level of third-year language or above, a course must be at least the seventh quarter of a language sequence.
Course Distribution
Students are required to complete a total of thirteen courses in the following combination: two courses in the introductory core; six courses in the two thematic subfields (two in one and four in the other); three courses in area and civilization studies, two of which must be in the same region of the world; and the two course BA seminar taught only in sequence in the autumn and winter quarters.
Students select their courses in consultation with IS program advisers. The IS faculty selects courses each year that are accepted toward the major, and the list is posted (online and in the IS program office) quarterly.
Foreign Language
Students can meet the program's foreign language requirement in one of two ways:
- Students may complete the equivalent of seven quarters of language study in a single language. Credit for the seventh and final quarter must be earned by Chicago course registration. For information about the use of language as elective courses in the major, see the Course Distribution section above.
- Students may obtain an Advanced Language Proficiency Certificate, which is documentation of advanced functional ability in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. For details, visit the College's Advanced Language Proficiency page.
Study Abroad
Students are required to (1) complete a minimum of eight weeks of academic study in an approved study abroad program or (2) complete an approved internship or approved BA research project abroad. Students are strongly encouraged to integrate their study abroad into their BA thesis projects. The best ways of doing so are, in order of significance: independent research abroad, the Social Sciences Winter Quarter in Paris or Spring Quarter in Beijing, or a study abroad program that offers a practicum or internship. While useful for fulfilling the program requirement, the Civilization Abroad programs seldom allow time for independent fieldwork, research, or study. Participation in any study abroad program that is approved by the University of Chicago will fulfill this requirement; for more information, consult with the study abroad advisers or visit study-abroad.uchicago.edu. See Opportunities Abroad on the IS program website for further information about the study abroad requirement. The requirement can be waived only by petition for students who are able to demonstrate a similarly significant, structured international education experience at the college level. Students wishing to undertake a program outside the University's offerings must obtain approval of the program director before departure. Students may not participate in a study abroad program in Autumn and Winter Quarters of their senior year.
Students born outside of the United States who have completed high school education in their country of birth may waive the study abroad requirement.
Second Year
Most second year IS majors will take the Contemporary Global Issues sequence (INST 23101-23102 Contemporary Global Issues I-II) during their Autumn and Winter Quarters. In addition, all prospective IS majors must meet with the program assistant during their Spring Quarter to declare the major and review their course of study.
Third Year
All students who are intending to major in International Studies should schedule a meeting with the program advisers during Autumn Quarter of their third year. During Winter Quarter, all third-year students will attend a required meeting with the program assistant. The purpose of this meeting is to provide information about the BA thesis and introduce students to the requirements and specific deadlines pertaining to the thesis. By the end of fifth week, students must have submitted a topic proposal, have secured a faculty reader, and have completed a faculty reader form and annotated bibliography. A copy of the approved proposal must be filed in the departmental office (Gates-Blake 119) or students will not be eligible to register for the BA seminar. Students who are not in residence Spring Quarter of their third year should correspond with the program advisers about their plans for the BA paper before the end of Spring Quarter.
Fourth Year
Students are required to complete a BA thesis, finish their course work, and enroll in the two BA thesis seminars in the Autumn and Winter Quarters.
In their fourth year, students register for the autumn and winter BA Thesis Seminars (INST 29800-29801). The seminars teach research skills and more generally aid the research and writing process. Both INST 29800 BA Thesis (Autumn Seminar) and INST 29801 BA Thesis (Winter Seminar) count toward the thirteen courses required for the major. The final version of the BA thesis is due by the second Friday of the quarter in which the student plans to graduate. Successful completion of the thesis requires a passing grade from the faculty reader.
Beginning with the Class of 2016, the IS major thesis must be clearly organized around a contemporary global issue. Students may still double-major, but double-majoring with another program that requires a BA thesis would entail (a) the second major's program accepting the IS thesis as fulfilling their program's BA requirements, or (b) the student completing an additional BA thesis for their second major.
Regardless of the requirements of the second major, IS majors are required to complete both quarters of the fourth-year BA seminar.
Summary of Requirements
| 2 International Studies introductory courses | 200 | |
| Contemporary Global Issues I | ||
| Contemporary Global Issues II | ||
| 2 Thematic courses (one subfield) | 200 | |
| 4 Thematic courses (second subfield) | 400 | |
| 3 Regional Studies courses | 300 | |
| INST 29800 | BA Thesis (Autumn Seminar) | 100 |
| INST 29801 | BA Thesis (Winter Seminar) | 100 |
| Total Units | 1300 | |
Honors
On the basis of a recommendation from the faculty adviser, students with an overall GPA of 3.2 or higher and a GPA of 3.5 or higher in the major will be considered for honors. For award of honors, the BA thesis must be judged "high pass" by the faculty thesis adviser.
Grading
Students who are majoring in IS must receive quality grades (i.e., not P or N) in all courses meeting the requirements of the degree program.
International Studies Courses
INST 23101-23102. Contemporary Global Issues I-II.
INST 23101. Contemporary Global Issues I. 100 Units.
This course is a foundational overview of key global questions and challenges of globalization and globalness. The first course in a 2-course sequence, it is designed for International Studies majors. The course proceeds thematically, stringing together many themes that usually comprise the domain of “global” affairs, events, items, organizations, trends, and phenomena. The course also unfolds theoretically and empirically, rooting theoretical propositions in some concrete historical, geographic, and cultural locations. Investigation of global entails attention to local, as well as to some concepts that are not so easy to site—flows, dynamics, or trends—and terrains that are only tentatively geographical: regional, transnational, cosmopolitan, ideological, virtual, planetary. Thus, a parallel task of the course will be to inquire: how do we study global, how do we grasp the local, and what are the means of observing, assessing, qualifying, and quantifying all intermediate spaces and categories that make up contemporary life on multiple scales of existence? At the heart of our course exploration is existence under the global condition, and we will be wondering about human life in the light of contemporary challenges and opportunities: new technologies and diseases, global imagination and mass consumption, nation-states and emergencies that transcend borders, and enduring histories.
Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): It is recommended that students who are majoring in IS enroll in this required introductory course in their second year. Students must complete INST 23101 and INST 23102 prior to the year in which they graduate.
INST 23102. Contemporary Global Issues II. 100 Units.
This course is the second part of a two-course sequence designed for students majoring in International Studies with two objectives in mind. First, in the vein of Introduction to Contemporary Global Issues 1 (CGI-1), the course continues to explore concepts, processes, and phenomena that constitute ‘globalness’, giving them historical depth and critical angle. Unlike CGI-I, however, this course reads closely three books while examining three broad fields of inquiry—science/knowledge/technology; economy; and politics—and three overlapping disciplinary approaches: anthropology, sociology, and history. Second, the course relies on the assigned texts as excellent examples of scholarship with which to elucidate the processes and challenges of academic research. We will learn, by means of these examples, how to design an academic research project. The second objective of the course, then, will be to produce a research proposal, developing in the process a better understanding of what scholarly research entails and what preliminary work needs to be done in order for a research project to proceed. The drafting of the research proposal will follow a set of the very same guidelines that will structure the writing of your BA research proposal (due to the IS at the beginning of the Spring Quarter of your third year) and your BA thesis. More generally, however, you can rely on the research framework introduced here to guide any other research endeavor, undertaken in the context of another course, a field research, or a grant proposal.
Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): INST 23101
Note(s): It is recommended that students who are majoring in IS enroll in this required introductory course in their second year. Students must complete INST 23101 and INST 23102 prior to the year in which they graduate.
INST 27701. Magic Matters. 100 Units.
The course explores the lively presence of magic in the contemporary, presumably disenchanted world. It approaches the problem of magic historically—examining how magic became an object of social scientific inquiry—and anthropologically, attending to the magic in practice on the margins of the industrial, rational, cosmopolitan, and technological societies and economies. Furthermore, this course reads classic and contemporary ethnographies of magic together with studies of science and technology to critically examine questions of agency, practice, experience, experiment, and efficacy. The course reads widely across sites, disciplines, and theories, attending to eventful objects and alien agents, stepping into post-socialist, post-colonial, and post-secular magic markets and medical clinics, and reading for the political energies of the emergent communities that effectively mix science, magic, and technology.
Instructor(s): L. Jasarevic Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 25116,CHDV 25116
INST 27702. About Nature: From Science to Sense. 100 Units.
“Consider mushrooms,” Anna Tsing (2012) suggests to those who are curious about human nature and she points to the relational and biological diversity found at the unruly edges of the global empire—the governmentalized, politicized, commoditized culturenature of capitalism. This class follows the suit, tracking the scent of what evidently remains, thrives, withdraws, overwhelms, and inspires wonder in the guises of the natural, wild, organic, or awesome. About Nature starts with critiques of the essentialized Nature in the modernist, theological, and scientific discourses but it directs attention elsewhere: to the zones of writing and practice, academic and activist, professional and popular, where the natural figures through theoretical insights, empirical observations, or in practical problems; where it materializes in sensuous encounters, knowledgeable collecting, or ecstatic experiences; and where it rallies communities of inquiry and interest. We will be interested in popular commitments to natural living and eating, from North American wild fermentation movement to Russian dacha summer gardens and will read about some local traditions and revivals of medicinal, artisanal, and homemade foods. We will ask how are the process of foraging, preparing, consuming, and sharing playing up and reworking locally contingent intimacies between vegetal, animal, and otherwise non-human worlds. The class readings jump scales from “hyperobjects” (Morton 2013) to microbes (Paxson 2013, Money 2011). The reading list mixes ethnographies with literary, philosophical, and “mystical” texts and pairs anthropological discussions with practical manuals (on bee-keeping, mushroom collecting, and live-culture foods) and popular science books (on mushrooms, insects, and herbs). Our aim in reading so widely is to grasp the capacity with which the natural assembles and animates varied phenomena, collective feelings, and usable facts as well as to catalogue the excesses and mysteries where the luxuriant, charming, formidable value of the natural lingers, lurks, or “huddles defensively” (Tsing 2012; Shiva 1993, 1997). Moreover, the class will look obliquely to the natural sciences—botany, environmental sciences, and entomology—presuming neither their thorough disenchantment nor a merely performative and populist value of scientific “wonder” and curiosity, but rather listening to how the empirical requirements and experiential contacts, proofs and feelings spell out the range of relations with the natural objects, forms, and worlds across genres. Throughout, our class discussions and a few field visits will be most attentive to the fungal and feral, insective and instinctive, weedy and herbal, as we interrogate, with Anna Tsing and others, relations that compose the natural-cultural forms, lives, and collectives at the seams of global capital.
Instructor(s): L. Jasarevic Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 25117
INST 29700. Reading and Research. 100 Units.
This is a reading and research course for independent study not related to BA research or BA paper preparation.
Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and program director.
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course form. As part of this process students must specify in which of the three tracks (International Political Economy, Transnational Processes, or Area and Civilization Studies) they would like the course to count.
INST 29800. BA Thesis (Autumn Seminar) 100 Units.
This weekly seminar, taught by graduate student preceptors in consultation with faculty readers, is designed to aid students in their thesis research. Students are exposed to different conceptual frameworks and research strategies. Students must have approved topic proposals and faculty readers to participate in the seminar.
Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): INST 23102 and consent of instructor.
Note(s): Required of students with fourth-year standing who are majoring in IS, but enrollment not permitted in quarter of graduation.
INST 29801. BA Thesis (Winter Seminar) 100 Units.
This weekly seminar, taught by graduate student preceptors in consultation with faculty readers, offers students continued BA research and writing support. Students present drafts of their work and critique the work of their peers.
Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): INST 29800 and consent of instructor.
Note(s): Required of students with fourth-year standing who are majoring in IS, but enrollment not permitted in quarter of graduation.
INST 29900. BA Thesis (Reading and Research) 100 Units.
This is a reading and research course for independent study related to BA research and BA thesis preparation.
Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and program director.
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course form. This course cannot be used to substitute for either quarter of the BA Thesis Seminar (INST 29800, INST 29801).
Contacts
Undergraduate Primary Contact
Program Director
James Hevia
G-B 116
834.7585
Email
Administrative Contact
Program Administrator
Joshua Oxley
G-B 119
834.7628
Email
Secondary Contact
Senior Lecturer
Larisa Jasarevic
G-B 123
834.5288
Email