WAGE Senior Fellows and Affiliates regularly offer graduate and undergraduate courses related to globalization and the international economy.  The Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy encourages students to review the below list of courses offered this fall, which includes several totally new courses.  Please note that enrollment is at the discretion of the individual professor and a number of the undergraduate courses allow for graduate enrollment.


Graduate

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Agricultural and Applied Economics 729: The Microdynamics of Environment and Development
Jennifer Alix-Garcia, Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics

This course explores the intersection of environmental and development economics using advanced theoretical and empirical models to examine rural conservation and development, technology adoption and diffusion, and the dynamics of investment behavior in the presence of imperfect capital markets.

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Anthropology 917: Globalization and Transnational Cultures
Yongming Zhou, Associate Professor of Anthropology
 
Scholars in fields from literature to political science to anthropology have recently developed converging interests in the study of global culture and in the flows of people, ideas and commodities that characterize today’s world. This seminar will review the current state of anthropological studies of globalization and transnational cultures and examine various approaches taken to the subject. The readings will be divided into two major parts: works that focus on conceptualizing and theorizing the global culture and ethnographies that represent and explore the multiplicity and complexity of it. Rather than providing “answers,” this seminar will encourage students to critically examine the issues being discussed through reading, discussion and writing.  

Anthropology/Economics/Geography/History/Political Science 983: Health, Disease, and Healing in Africa
Neil Kodesh, Assistant Professor of History
Claire Wendland, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
 
Over the past two decades or so, scholars have developed a complex literature on practices of health and healing in Africa.  This course examines why the topic of health and healing occupies such a central role in our understanding of Africa’s pasts and present.  It explores the creative and shifting ways in which Africans have sought to compose healthy communities through the expansion of therapeutic repertoires.  Our readings will vary from straight forward to very challenging; they include works from a variety of disciplines, including medical anthropology, history, journalism, geography, and epidemiology.  This is a seminar-style reading course and is cross-listed with Anthropology, Economics, Geography, History and Political Science.  Please contact both Professor Kodesh (kodesh@wisc.edu) and Professor Wendland (cwendland@wisc.edu) for permission to enroll. Enrollment is limited to graduate students.


Geography 675/901 Seminar: Globalizing Higher Education and Research for the ‘Knowledge Economy’
Kris Olds, Professor of Geography

The course, which is designed for both upper level undergraduate and graduate students (MA/MSc/PhD), is designed to examine an array of issues related to the globalization of higher education and research. It will be approached by examining a range of developmental dynamics related to the globalization process.  GEOG 675/901 is designed to help students understand the evolving contexts which: (a) you are being educated in; (b) you might be working in in the future; and (c) are receiving enhanced levels of attention in academia, as well as in the public and private sectors in countries around the world.  The course is resolutely interdisciplinary, and students from all colleges and schools in UW-Madison are welcome to enroll. The key thing is that you are interested in debates about the production and transformation of knowledge, of regions (at multiple scales), of networks, of disciplines/fields, of professions, of statecraft (i.e. how the state operates), as well as broader tendencies of geographies of inclusion and exclusion. Mixed seminar; undergrads register for Geog 675 Lec 002, grads for Geog 901 Sem 001.

Course Website

History 434: America and the World since 1898
Jeremi Suri, Professor of History

This is a history course designed to enrich our understanding of America’s place in the world since the beginning of the twentieth century. The class follows upon History 433 –American Foreign Relations before the Twentieth Century. Lectures, discussions, and readings will start with the aftermath of the war of 1898 and close with the “war against terrorism” at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

We will define “foreign relations” broadly to explore the ways in which interactions with peoples and places identified as “foreign” transformed the nature of American society. The course will touch on issues of national power, territorial acquisition, market penetration, warfare, racial subjugation, class conflict, and gender subordination. We will study how America’s foreign relations helped determine what it means to be “American.” Situating the history of the United States in an international context we will learn how American debates about identity and power reflected and influenced events in distant venues.

This course will also highlight how contemporary assumptions about American society and foreign policy build, for better and for worse, on the past. The history of American foreign relations matters because we live with its consequences every day –at home and abroad. Lectures, readings, and discussions this semester will highlight important historical “legacies.”

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Institute for Environmental Studies 900: Evidence of Global Energy Governance Mechanisms
Paul Wilson, Greg Nemet, Bernie Lesieutre, Tracey Holloway

This seminar course is designed to offer EAP students (and those in related fields) an opportunity to explore a particular theme in the Energy Analysis and Policy area in depth. A selection of specific topics related to the theme are identified and assigned to the participating students with some guiding questions. Each week, the student responsible for that topic will identify some background reading (with assistance from the instructors) and guide a discussion with a brief (15-20 minute) informal presentation. Grades will be based on attendance and participation, with attention paid to the week that the student is leading the discussion. No other assignments are expected.

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Journalism and Mass Communication/Political Science 829: Political Communication
Dhavan Shah, Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication
 
This course examines the connection between mass media and politics.  We will take a decidedly psychological perspective on these issues, placing the individual at the center of our inquiry. The course will focus on the complex interrelationships between consumption of various types of media content and the motives, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors of democratic citizens. This is not to say that we will ignore the normative, organizational, or extra-media factors that shape mass media content, or that we will fail to consider the sociological and economic processes at play.  Still, a majority of our efforts will concern research at the intersection of communication, psychology, and political science conducted in Western democracies, mainly America.

The encapsulated aim of this course: To consider classics and controversies in the existing political communication literature and propose measurable concepts and testable theories that illuminate the relations between the consumption and content of the mass media in democratic societies and the political judgment, public opinion, and collective action of democratic citizens.

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Law 871: International Trade Law
Erik Ibele, Honorary Associate / Fellow of Law, Neider & Boucher SC

 

This course introduces students to the legal, business and policy aspects of international trade, focusing on United States trade law within the context of the WTO-GATT Agreements. There are no prerequisites for this course and no background in economics, international relations or international law is assumed.

Course Website


Law 918: Selected Problems in International Law
Jason Yackee, Assistant Professor of Law
Sumudu Atapattu, Assistant Faculty of Law

This course provides a hands-on introduction to international commercial arbitration.  The course is organized around the Vis Moot Arbitration contest, a premier international student moot.  During the first month of the fall semester we will examine in detail the rules governing international commercial arbitration. Then, in October and November, students will break out into "litigation teams" of four students; each team will be responsible for researching and writing a professional-quality claimant's memorandum based on the current problem for the Vis Moot Arbitration contest.   Finally, each litigation team will argue a portion of its brief orally to a panel of student "arbitrators". Students will receive three credits for the course.  The course must be taken pass-fail. Absent extraordinary permission to the contrary, the course is mandatory for students who wish to try out for UW Law School's official Vis team, which competes in the Vis contest in Vienna and Hong Kong during the spring semester.

Course Website


Law 922: Problems - Jurisprudence Seminar SP Jurisprudence: New Governance & Transformation
David Trubek, Professor Emeritus of Law


Law 981: Law & Modernization in Developing World
David Trubek, Professor Emeritus of Law
John Ohnesorge, Associate Professor of Law
 
The seminar will explore changing ideas about law's role in the process of economic development and the law reform and external development assistance practices these ideas have inspired. The idea that a "modern" legal system is central to economic development can be traced back to the 19th century. After World War II, this idea became the basis for organized assistance by bilateral and multilateral development assistance agencies. Today, bilateral agencies like USAID and international financial institutions like the World Bank devote substantial resources to "law and development" and the "rule of law". While billions are being spent, the enterprise rests upon a wealth of assumptions about the definition of law, the relationship of law to market activity, the role of the state in economic governance, the definition of modernity, and the efficacy of external intervention. Because both the assumptions and the policies and practices of the agencies based on them have changed over time, there have been several different approaches to "law and development" policy and practice. This seminar looks at changing legal and economic ideas and development assistance practices, surveys critiques of current models, looks at experience on the ground in areas such as Northeast Asia, China, and Latin America and explores ways that reform practices might avoid some of the pitfalls of the past. Readings will include Trubek and Santos, eds., The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal (Cambridge 2006), economic development theory, and case studies of law reform and legal assistance in several parts of the world. The seminar is open to law students and graduate students in all UW-Madison departments, Students are expected to write several short response papers during the semester and a research paper of at least 20 pages at the end.


Political Science 861: The Challenges of Democratization
Edward Friedman, Professor of Political Science
 
It brings seminar members up to the frontiers of knowledge on analytic work focused on key topics: how transitions to democracy occur, whether democracy can be promoted by those who are not citizens of the country, the good and bad of diverse institutional arrangements in crafting democracy, the sources of depth or shallowness of different democracy and the causes of the quality of a really existing democracy, the advantages of democracy, and the challenges to democracy from anti-democratic forces.


Political Science 864: International Political Economy
Mark Copelovitch, Assistant Professor of Political Science

This course is a research seminar in international political economy (IPE). Its purpose is to review recent research in IPE and gain insight into the international and domestic politics of foreign economy policymaking. The course is organized around research topics in three substantive areas: international trade, international monetary relations, and international financial relations. A central goal of the course is to identify the welfare effects and distributional consequences of governments’ foreign economic policy decisions, and to use the tools of political science to analyze how interest groups, voters, institutions, and power politics interact to shape policy outcomes (both domestically and internationally). The ultimate purpose of this course is to generate ideas for your own research, including papers and dissertation topics.

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Political Science 949: Post Communist Politics
Scott Gehlbach, Associate Professor of Political Science

Comparative study of political processes in the fomer Soviet Union and communist Eastern Europe states, focusing on the transition from and the continuing legacies of the communist experience; methodological issues in the study of post-communist politics.


Political Science 974: Global Financial Governace
Mark Copelovitch, Assistant Professor of Political Science

The purpose of this seminar is to explore key issues in global financial governance. The course will begin with an examination of the history and politics of international finance. Using this background as a foundation, we will then focus on the institutions and key policy issues in the contemporary international financial system. Topics will include the international financial institutions; international regulatory harmonization; exchange rates; the management and prevention of financial crises; and policy responses to the crisis of 2008-2009. The aim of this course is to provide an analytic background for students interested in government, private sector, or academic careers in global economic policy.

In this course, students will develop an understanding of the dynamics of the global energy system, focusing on ways that public policy can affect these changes in socially beneficial directions.  The perspective taken is that of a policy maker confronting decisions about the design and implementation of energy policy. Topics to be covered will span the full life cycle of energy production and use, including: material extraction, energy conversion, power generation, energy transportation, end use, and environmental impacts.

Old Syllabus 

Public Affairs 850: International Governance (La Follette Students Only)
Jonathan Zeitlin, La Follette School of Public Affairs

 
This a core foundation course for the Masters in International Public Affairs (MIPA).  The course is intended to provide students with a conceptual and contextual framework for understanding international public affairs in an age of globalization.  It does not seek to impart specific technical skills, but rather to stimulate critical thinking and to introduce students to key issues and sources in international governance research. Examines influences arising from international environment on policy makers and those seeking to influence policymaking. Considers role of global economic forces, international and regional organizations, international civil society reflected in non-governmental organizations, and flow of policies across borders.
 
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Public Affairs 974: Policy Responses to the Great Recession
Menzie Chinn, Professor of Public Affairs
 
This course will examine the hypotheses underlying the origins and propagation of the Great Recession of 2007, and the policy responses that have occurred along a variety of dimensions. The candidate causes include lax monetary policy, the “saving glut”, deregulation, securitization and the widespread use of derivatives, the activities of the Government Sponsored Enterprises (“Fannie Mae” and “Freddie Mac”), among others.
 

The discussion of responses will include the conduct of monetary policy and fiscal policy, the appropriateness of financial regulatory policy, the harmonization of international financial policy and trade policy. Other policies not typically thought to be related to the workings of the macro economy (housing, energy, sectoral/industrial policy, e.g., automobiles) will also be examined.

Course Website 


Sociology 915 (Section 3): Social Theories of Border
Samer Alatout, Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology and Geography

Aside from earlier international relations’ interest in borders as markers of state legitimacy, border theory emerged from an interest in life at the US/Mexico border in the 1980s. Since then, its reverberations were felt in a number of disciplinary and interdisciplinary frameworks from anthropology to geography, from sociology to environmental studies, as well as ethnic, race, and literary studies. Scholars commented on the complexity of a number of related concepts that deal with borders: e.g., borderlines, border zones, and border crossings. They also commented on the place of borders within the national-territorial imaginary, especially under the globalization of late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.  As can be expected, scholarly contributions cover a great number of opinions from those who see borderlines and border zones as most essential in the making of the nation and the state to those who emphasize their marginal position in national politics. While most of this work underscores the importance of the material/territorial manifestations of borders, many other works focus on the symbolic, extra-territorial framing of border talk, especially when speaking of boundaries of identity/difference along gender, race, class, ethnic, and north/south lines.

During the same period, the field of science and technology studies has been grappling with issues of boundaries—between the scientific and the political, the true and the false, the institutional and the cultural. However, the spatial and territorial manifestations of knowledge production, their border effects if you will, have scarcely and only recently been brought under discussion. Probably unsurprisingly, social studies of environmental sciences have been especially interested in the spatial and border effects of scientific knowledge. 

In this seminar, we will read works from all of these fields with the purpose of defining our own frameworks for conceptualizing borders. The seminar is also a research seminar. So, it is meant to encourage all of us to think of the border effects that are hidden, masked, and yet undiscovered in our research cases. Students will be writing brief (one-page) thought pieces throughout with the aim of producing a draft of a “publishable” manuscript towards the end of the semester.

 
Undergraduate 

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Agricultural and Applied Economics 374: The Growth and Development of Nations in the Global Economy
Bradford Barham, Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics

This course explores the roles of markets, states, and civil institutions, using economic theory, computer simulations, and historical experience to better understand the forces that shape the wealth and well-being of nations and people around the world.

Course Website


Economics 364: Survey of International Economics
Maria Muniagurria, Faculty Associate of Economics

The first and major part of the course explores the theoretical foundations of International Trade, focusing on why nations trade and what do they trade, in what sense international trade is beneficial to trading countries, the effect of different trade policy instruments and international trade agreements. Current policy issues will be examined to demonstrate the usefulness as well as the limitations of the theory. The second part of the course will be devoted to topics in International Finance: balance of payments, foreign exchange market.

This course will focus on the links between firms and international trade.We will study theoretical models,evaluate the effects of government policies and look at both aggregate empirical evidence and case studies. Intermediate Microeconomics (Econ 301) is a prerequisite for the course.

Course Website

Geography 675/901 Seminar: Globalizing Higher Education and Research for the ‘Knowledge Economy’
Kris Olds, Professor of Geography

The course, which is designed for both upper level undergraduate and graduate students (MA/MSc/PhD), is designed to examine an array of issues related to the globalization of higher education and research. It will be approached by examining a range of developmental dynamics related to the globalization process.  GEOG 675/901 is designed to help students understand the evolving contexts which: (a) you are being educated in; (b) you might be working in in the future; and (c) are receiving enhanced levels of attention in academia, as well as in the public and private sectors in countries around the world.  The course is resolutely interdisciplinary, and students from all colleges and schools in UW-Madison are welcome to enroll. The key thing is that you are interested in debates about the production and transformation of knowledge, of regions (at multiple scales), of networks, of disciplines/fields, of professions, of statecraft (i.e. how the state operates), as well as broader tendencies of geographies of inclusion and exclusion. Mixed seminar; undergrads register for Geog 675 Lec 002, grads for Geog 901 Sem 001. 

Course Website 


History 434: America and the World since 1898 
Jeremi Suri, Professor of History


History 600: The Past and Future of American Grand Strategy
Jeremi Suri, Professor of History


Interdisciplinary Engineering 102:  Introduction to Society's Grand Challenges
Paul Wilson, Associate Professor of Engineering Physics

Description and discussion of how engineering disciplines address specific engineering grand challenges in society. Focus on societal and multicultural issues encountered in engineering, as well as economic, ethical and political constraints on engineering solutions. Development of students' professional skills.


International Studies 101: Global Challenges: An Introduction to International Studies
Scott Straus, Associate Professor of Political Science

International Studies 101 is the introductory gateway course to the IS Major. The course is a survey of contemporary global issues, ranging from changes in international relations, to the rise of democratization, to the global financial crisis, to global poverty, to civil war, to counterinsurgency, to international human rights, and climate change. In keeping with the International Studies Major, the approach is multidisciplinary and divided into five major sections: politics, economics, security, human rights and humanitarianism, and health and environment.


Political Science 103: Introduction to International Politics
Lisa Martin, Professor of Political Science
 
This is an introduction to theories of international politics.  Substantively, it covers security issues, globalization, and global civil society issues.

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Political Science 312: Politics of the World Economy
Edward Friedman, Professor of Political Science
 
This course explores both how polities throughout history and all around the globe learn to rise and do well by plugging into international exchanges and also how and why other polities and regions can find the obstacles to wealth expansion daunting. The course begins with ancient civilizations and ends grappling with contemporary crises with an eye to the future.

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Political Science 338: The European Union: Politics and Political Economy
Nils Ringe, Assistant Professor of Political Science
 
This course consists of four parts. First, we will seek to understand the historical background against which the EU was created. Second, we will examine the evolution of the European Union over time. Third, we will investigate the way in which the European Union is organized, as well as its policies, its political economy, its relationship with the member states, and its role in international politics. Finally, we will explore various theories throughout the semester that seek to explain the integration process and outline different “visions for Europe.”

The EU’s existence and development raises many questions indeed. Why would a number of independent and, in some cases, historically antagonistic countries, decide to join forces if this means giving up much of their national sovereignty? What is gained, and what is lost, in this process? What does the EU look like, and how does it work? What are its achievements and limitations? What is its role in Europe and the world today, and what will it be in years to come? Understanding the EU is central to understanding the continent’s recent past, present, and future.

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Political Science 359: American Foreign Policy
Jon Pevehouse, Associate Professor of Political Science

 

This course examines persistent problems facing the United States in its search for national security and international stability and progress.


Sociology 125: Contemporary American Society 
Joel Rogers, Professor of Law

This course provides an extended answer to the question of what kind of a country the United States is. It also explores the implications of that answer for understanding and making progress in solving some of the social problems that confront America today. Our discussion revolves around three key values that most Americans believe our society should realize:

Efficiency: –the idea that the economy allocates scarce resources in ways that reflect social values, is driven by “free choice” among consumers, and uses inputs to maximum advantage
Fairness: –the idea that we live in a land of equal opportunity and justice, without unfair privileges and disadvantages
Democracy: –the idea that our public decisions reflect the collective will of equal citizens rather than those of powerful elites

Our basic question in this course is: To what degree does contemporary American society realize these values, and how might it do a better job? A second but important question for us is: How do social scientists go about answering such questions?

 
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More courses and syllabi will be posted as we hear from faculty.

For professors interested in posting course information or adding syllabi, please email the pertinent information to wage@intl-institute.wisc.edu and we will post it to our course pages.