To obtain a BPhil in International Area Studies, I pursued a concentration in Peace, Conflict, and Security. I took multiple courses surrounding war which focused on the structural causes and potential solutions. This complimented my anthropology course that I took when I studied abroad which examined the civil war in Northern Ireland. Beyond the study of war, I have also concentrated on conflict in the Middle East through one history course, one political science course, and one linguistics course. I learned about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, current issues in the Middle East such as the Syrian Civil War, and an in-depth examination of one country in the region, Turkey. Finally, I took one political science course on international organizations that exist to deal with conflict and build relationships between countries, and I took one political science course to better understand research methods which was invaluable to my own research project.
Caroline Smith
University of Pittsburgh
Global Studies Coursework
Coursework Descriptions
I took Introduction to Global Studies as a Freshman which began my interest in the field of Global Studies and launched my academic career onto its current path. In this course I first learned about how global processes are contributing to wider conflicts. Learning about the global economy and neoliberal institutions in this course encouraged me to apply these concepts in my other courses about civil war and immigration.
This course was also essential to my understanding of how to interact with differing opinions within academia. We read pieces by scholars who emphasized a conservative world-view as well as a constructivist world-view to better understand the debates surrounding the many global issues facing the world. This allowed me to approach debates and papers about climate change, agriculture, and international organizations with a more nuanced understanding of the different positions and my own opinions. This skill became essential to my concentration as there are a vast number of opinions on how to tackle issues contributing to instability in the world.
The following is a paper I wrote on the neoliberal capitalist structure’s affect on people, cultures, the environment, and politics globally. This paper highlights how I learned to think about global issues from multiple dimensions.
This course focused on the structural reasons for conflict and the specifics of civil war. This course was essential to my degree because it was the first course that exposed me to how security concerns affect how a state functions. I focused on security concerns in my thesis paper and this class gave me the foundation to do this.
This course also complimented my studies in Belfast, Northern Ireland well. Learning about how governments and rebel groups make decisions to fight or not fight gave me a better understanding of the conflict in Northern Ireland. I even got to write about the conflict and the experiences I had in Belfast in this class. Furthermore, this class complimented my studies on the Middle East well. I got to write a paper about the structural reasons for the Syrian Civil War. Examining how the war began was an interesting perspective because most of my classes on the Middle East focused on the consequences of the war instead of how it began. See the link below for my paper on the Syrian Civil War.
This course was a continuation of my other political science course on civil wars. In this class we considered more conflicts than just civil war such as inter-state war, terrorism, and other forms of non-state violence. I was also able to use this opportunity to learn more about the greater-Middle East region. I wrote a paper on the Libyan Civil War which was an amazing opportunity to not only research the reasons for the causes of the war and the current state of the war, but to also examine previous peace efforts and form my own suggestions on how to create lasting peace.
This class focused on equipping me with the skills necessary to propose intelligent peace agreements and constructively criticize previous peace agreements crafted by the United Nations and others. In the paper below, I spent a significant amount of time examining how the unique conditions in Libya need to be met with a unique peace agreement to bring stability back to the nation.
I took this course when I studied abroad in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was particularly useful to my concentration in Conflict, Peace, and Security because international organizations are the main way the world tries to tackle conflict. I got the opportunity to examine the United Nations Charter and I also got to debate the relevancy of the United Nations protecting state sovereignty in light of Russia annexing the Crimea.
I also learned about many other international organizations I had never heard of such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This was interesting because we debated whether this organization was a way for Russia to control Asian countries or if its purpose was more like the United Nations. Critiquing global institutions was important for my later coursework on civil wars and peace agreements because certain regional and global organizations are better at facilitating peace agreements than others. The knowledge I gained in this class was applied directly to my policy recommendations for the Libyan Civil War.
This course was an introduction into statistics and research methods used in political science. While not directly related to Peace, Security, and Conflict, this class was essential to my ability to craft a thesis project and conduct my research. I learned how to use the computer program R in this course and then used this platform to conduct my statistical analysis for my thesis paper.
Quantitative research is becoming more important for political science research and PhD programs which I plan to pursue. Therefore, this class was an important introduction to the types of research methods I will be using in the future.
This course examined the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the beginning of civilization in the area to today. This course was an important part of my concentration because I had the opportunity to trace a conflict through history which spanned thousands of years. Learning about conflict from a historical perspective differed from learning about conflict from a political science perspective because it gave me the opportunity to examine the conflict beyond the present-day reality. I found out through this class the historical context for this conflict is exceptionally important and has informed my discussions and debates about the present-day conflict and potential solutions. Without learning about this conflict from a historical context, I would not be able to articulate as nuanced of an opinion as I feel I am able to form now if I had only studied this conflict from a political science perspective.
This course in history encouraged me to examine other conflicts from historical perspectives as well. For my capstone class on civil wars I incorporated a significant amount of historical context in my paper on the Libyan civil war which enriched my paper considerably.
Furthermore, this course encouraged me to engage with contentious issues. I wrote a paper on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and how it can be perceived as a way of protesting Israel. This was a fantastic opportunity for me to consider a divisive issue from an academic point of view. See below for this paper which I presented at Duquesne University’s Undergraduate Research Symposium on Islamic Studies on April 9th, 2016.
This course examined Turkey’s culture, politics, history, and society, and by focusing on more aspects of Turkey besides politics, it enriched my understanding of my concentration in conflict. My understanding of conflict in Turkey made more sense after learning about Turkish culture because many of the conflicts in Turkey are fueled by cultural reasons. Minorities who are in conflict with the Turkish government like some of the Kurdish groups, are in conflict because their culture and representation have been suppressed to promote Turkish culture. By gaining a better understanding of how cultural factors influence conflict, I was able to write a paper on Turkey’s interests in the Syrian Civil War and how cultural factors have influenced these interests. See the link below for my paper on Turkey’s role in Syria.
Turkey’s Interests in the Syrian Civil War
This course also began my interest in Turkey and Turkish politics which ultimately contributed to my thesis paper. Learning about the food, religions, politics, and historical figures of Turkey piqued my interest in the country. After this course I began to look into Turkey’s democracy and government which helped me develop my research project on authoritarianism in Turkey.
I took this course when I studied abroad in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This anthropology course was taught by a historian and an anthropologist, and I learned both the history of the conflict in Northern Ireland as well as other elements of the conflict including the identity politics of the conflict and the structure of the peace agreement. The first paper I wrote for this class focused on how the conflict was an ethnic conflict and attempted to prove how the two warring sides were distinct ethnicities. Ethnic conflict is an important part of conflict studies, but the conflict in Northern Ireland is rarely seen as an ethnic conflict. Therefore, by having to prove this was an ethnic conflict and think critically about what constitutes ethnicity gave me a better understanding of the dynamics of ethnic conflict. See the link below for this paper on ethnic conflict in Northern Ireland.
Ethnic Conflict in Northern Ireland
This course was also my first exposure to conflict resolution techniques. We critically discussed the peace negotiation process and how the structure of the peace agreement works well in ethnic conflicts. I wrote a paper on this topic, consociationalism, and I used this idea that I learned in Belfast to propose conflict resolution techniques in my paper on Libya. See the following link for my paper on how consociationalism functioned to solve the conflict in Northern Ireland.
This course on immigration has exposed me to how conflict results in migration and the security issues this presents. While my previous courses have examined refugees fleeing the Syrian and Libyan civil wars, this course also let me learn about other types of migration like economic migrants and climate refugees. This course was important to my understanding of how the current world economic structure is fueling migration and xenophobia. For example, in the paper in the link below, I considered different factors contributing to migration and violence against migrants. One of these factors is climate change which disproportionately hurts the countries least equipped to deal with climate change resulting in refugees. Another factor I considered was how trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement hurts farmers in Mexico and fuels illegal migration into the United States. This in turn creates conflict at the border and fuels xenophobic rhetoric. See the following link for this paper.
Understanding the structural issues of the world’s economic system and climate change is vital to ameliorating unsafe migration. In my final paper for this class, I will be considering some of the proposals to help stem unsafe migration and violence against migrants. Furthermore, I will get to propose my own solutions to issues such as DACA. I am excited to engage in this exercise as it is my hope to one day work for the United Nations or the European Union on conflict resolution. Criticizing and forming my own ideas on how to tackle global issues.
Other Relevant Courses
This course covered the history and politics of almost every country in the Middle East since World War I. It applied directly to my concentration because it is impossible to discuss the Middle East without discussing security issues and peace agreements. What was different about this course, though, was the attempt at regional comparison. In the following papers that I wrote for the class, I compared Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Iraq to better understand how political developments in the Middle East share similar characteristics thanks to their shared colonial histories and close political ties.
This course was also essential to my thesis paper because I focused on authoritarianism in Turkey in this paper. Learning about every country in the Middle East gave me a better understanding how authoritarianism shows itself regionally and allowed me to make comparisons between Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, and other countries. The ability to make regional comparisons has been invaluable to my analytical papers, and it has encouraged me to examine global trends.
See the following two papers on how I developed my ability to make regional comparisons.
Politics of the Middle East Paper 1
Politics of the Middle East Paper 2
This course was important to my global understanding of my degree. Learning about the politics of multiple nations has helped me be able to draw parallels between different regimes and how they maintain peace. China is an authoritarian regime and maintains peace and security much differently than the western regimes I studied in my other political science classes. Having China as a comparative country to Middle Eastern countries has been especially informative as each authoritarian regime maintains peace differently. This course on China and learning about its authoritarian nature first began my interest in how voters and citizens feel about democracy and autocracy. I learned about how China uses village elections to make its citizens feel they have control over the country while this is largely an illusion. I used this as a basis for my research into my thesis topic of increasing authoritarianism in the world.
In this course I am examining three different prison experiences: the Gulag in the Soviet Union, the Holocaust, and the American prison experience. This course was important to my understanding of my concentration because while the causes and consequences of conflict are often discussed, the actual prison system is generally looked over. Furthermore, this is a literature course, which was a new and interesting way to examine conflict. Art and literature are important ways people deal with traumatic events like these prison experiences and they can tell us a lot about conditions during conflict. I think it is essential to humanize conflict and this literature course has been a great opportunity for me to learn more about these three experiences.
This course complimented my studies on conflict and the Middle East because religion is often cited as one of the root causes of conflict in the region. While I know this to be inaccurate, religion does play a large role in identity politics. It was important for me to have a thorough understanding of the major religions of the region to better understand how religion is used to other people in politics and conflicts.