The course surveys various philosophical interpretations of globalisation and theories of war including, but not limited to, those of Wallerstein, Sloterdijk, Bauman, Huntington, Appadurai, Baudrillard, Foucault, Latour and Virilio. Students are required to demonstrate an understanding of globalisation and war and to hereby avoid conceptual promiscuity in their future discussions. To this end, the course introduces and develops various academic abilities:
Critical literacy skills
1. Understand that academic writing is grounded in inquiry.
2. Demonstrate the ability to distinguish your ideas from, as well as to integrate them into, the ideas of others.
3. Take cognisance of how academic argument works through raising new questions, even if they sometimes go unanswered.
Assignment writing skills
1. Implement logic and use academic writing conventions in polished essays by employing a central idea or controlling purpose (a thesis) that requires detailed argument and development.
2. Carefully contextualising the thesis in light of the readings that ground the assignment
3. Use paragraphs that develop the thesis in any number of ways, from offering examples with explanations, to citing authorities, to critically examining a claim from the reading, to comparing and contrasting, to offering a logical chain of reasoning, to defining and redefining terms, and so on.