Sarah Daly

I learned a lot about how violence is use and how civilians are affected by it. I also learned how to design a study in international political violence.

Major theoretical frameworks for understanding causes and outcomes of interstate and intrastate wars

I learned a lot about quantitative statistics (perhaps as I was taking this alongside a data analysis class), but they paired well together.

I learned a great deal about the causes and dynamics at play when it comes to civil conflict. Most importantly, I learned that situations are nuanced and rarely is there one conclusive "correct" answer to the question of why conflicts play out.

Very reading heavy. Grading is unclear, although she gives good feedback. However, discussions were always very good and the Professor does a good job balancing lecture content and discussion. I would take it if you're in the International Relations / Comparative Politics subfields.

In the future, I think it would be helpful for Professor Daly to give us more written details about the midterm and final paper which outline what she expects us to do. I would recommend that she publish these documents on CourseWorks. This is a very small issue I had with the course; other than that, the course was amazing.

I learned about fundamental concepts within the field of war and peace studies. I learned about a variety of conceptual frameworks within the field and how they have evolved overtime. I learned about everything from theorized causes of the onset of war to transitional justice and peacebuilding mechanisms. I also learned how to apply different theoretical frameworks to different cases of war and peacebuilding. Ultimately, the course gave me a substantial amount of knowledge in approaches to thinking about war and peace through critical lenses.

Civil wars and how they develop and conclude

This course is highly recommended to any student who wants to better grasp why war occurs, why war continues, why war ends, and what the process of peace looks like. In a world that experiences the unfortunate reality of war, this course provides a great way to analyze and think about the broader phenomenon of war and peace.

Just for me personally, I thought it was going to fascinate me more. I also thought it was going to be more focused on international wars. I found the lectures to be a bit lackluster. I think there's more potential for this course. I didn't really enjoy that our last 3 weeks were student presentations, I would have liked to have seen more class content during that time. I was really excited for this class, but for me it was just a bit underwhelming. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Fall 2024 Course: POLSUN3961_009_2024_3-INTERNATIONALPOLITICSSEMINAR : POLSUN3961_009_2024_3 - INTERNATIONAL POLITICS SEMINAR Instructor: Sarah Daly