texts_war - Texts and War
Dr. Patricia Angley
Dr. B. M. E. Jungblut

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Course Description:

Throughout human history, war and other forms of militarized conflict have been pervasive both within nations and across the globe. This situation continues today. In this course, students engage with texts (imaginative, narrative, visual, audio, historical, political, journalistic, and propagandistic) that represent multiple perspectives and experiences intersecting war. These texts provide students the opportunities critically to explore the causes of war; investigate diverse experiences of war; and analyze the aftermath – and consequences – of war.

By experiencing these texts, students encounter seemingly paradoxical themes such as vision and destruction, glorification and devastation, good and evil, and determinism and free will. The texts – along with the in-class discussions, take-home exams, and research papers – encourage students to think about war’s relevance to, and impact on, our lives.

For the purposes of this course, “texts” are defined in the postmodern sense. Therefore, “texts” can – and to the professors’ minds do – mean films, speeches, plays, poetry, novels, short stories, memoirs, narratives, non-fiction, sacred texts, photographs, paintings, and other art forms. This course provides opportunities for students to experience, analyze, critique, interpret, and build upon these texts in their own research and writing.

This course combines two different expert perspectives on war. While both professors are intrigued by war – its causes, processes, and consequences – each brings particular discipline-specific strengths to this course. Dr. Angley is highly knowledgeable about literature and other texts – and will prove a great resource to students who want to experience the human, emotional, personal side of war – and who want to experience war through the views of the authors and artists on whom the course focuses. She will draw upon her strengths and expertise to challenge students to view war through varied lenses – through postmodernism, constructivism, deconstruction, feminism, ethnography, a focus on different, culture-specific views, and critical literary analysis. In contrast, Dr. Jungblut is a quantitative researcher who focuses on the theoretical and empirical causes and consequences of war – and militarized interstate and intrastate conflict, in general. She will draw upon her strengths and expertise to challenge students to view war through additional lenses – realism, liberalism, neo-liberal institutionalism, radicalism, positivism, post-positivism, the scientific method, collective social choice theory, and game theory.

As this course is conducted in a Computer Collaboration Classroom, students have ample opportunities to engage in team learning and activity- and project-based development and implementation of research, critical analysis, and interpretation skills. It is hypothesized that team learning environments created and fostered in this course can significantly improve students’ understanding of the course concepts and students’ ability to conduct research. (This is one of the many hypotheses to be ‘put to the test’ this semester). Very few research activities in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors are conducted by a single researcher. Most often, teams of researchers work together to tackle and solve such problems. Even in academia, team-based research is increasingly common. Productive social interactions are critical to the success of these research projects. This course provides many opportunities for students to develop collaboration and interpersonal communication skills – skills that many future employers will value highly.

Thus, under the supervision of the professors, students choose to work on research papers and presentations that come from ideas presented in the texts and in the class discussions. These projects further student learning in a way that highlights the themes around which the course is designed. The course enhances critical thinking about how concepts of war are constructed in the imagination and in the material world. Students accept responsibility for their own assessment when they co-determine the evaluation criteria for their reflection papers and semester projects. Thus, students participate in a learning environment that requires autonomy and accountability. Learning is dynamic and disruptive, encouraging students to view and assess the causes, experiences, and consequences of war through multiple perspectives and to challenge ‘conventional’ notions of war. By the end of the course students know that war is not something that happens to someone else. In our increasingly globalized world, war may affect anyone, any where, any time.

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