[I]maginative literature and analysis in international relations do not inhabit different
worlds; they overlap and even intertwine—or at least they should.
(Darby 1998: 19)
Introduction
For the past five years, we have been engaged in teaching and research that can be
described as examining the nexus of international relations and literature/filmic studies.
Our teaching developed within the context of our academic institution, an undergraduate,
residential multidisciplinary public affairs and liberal arts college within a large research
institution. The college has a large international relations program which provides a rich
array of fairly traditional IR courses in international security, international political
economy, third world development, comparative analysis of foreign policy, US foreign
policy, and the like. Given recent concern in the field of international relations with the
rise of national, cultural and religious identities, the continuing problem of religious and
cultural conflicts, the spread of the internet and global media flows, it seemed to
appropriate to develop courses that would encourage our students to explore the
connections between culture and international politics. We therefore envisioned and
taught Culture, Politics, and Post-Colonialism, and The Cold War: Culture, Politics and
Foreign Policy. Building on Darby’s observation that the creation of a course that
combines literature, culture, and politics should be, if not easy, attractive, we expected
the development of these courses both intellectually and pedagogically to be challenging
but enriching. Yet, as we sought out other models, we discovered that the integration of
IR and literature has been limited, particularly in courses in the social sciences.
1
Anthropology is a notable exception. See Sherry Ortner (ed.) The Fate of “Culture:”
Geertz and Beyond. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. And the works of
Winifred Amaturo (1995) and Cynthia Weber (2001) are beginning to bridge this gap in
the field of international relations.
2
Convention