Politics of Security

Security isn't a fixed list of threats, it's a political construct, and this course pushes you to ask who gets to declare something a security issue, whose interests that framing serves, and what gets normalized once the label sticks. You'll work through case studies spanning migration, identity, nuclear politics, gender, and popular culture, applying theories like securitization to read empirical episodes rather than memorizing them. As an advanced POLS elective, it builds on your IR and political theory foundations and is where students learn to treat "security" itself as the object of analysis, which matters for anyone heading into policy, area studies, or graduate research.