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International studies and Political Science.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

International Studies is emerging as a separate interdisciplinary major at many universities. This article places this growing field in the context of its disciplinary origins and assesses its curricular requirements. It argues for a truly interdisciplinary major that while emerging from Political Science takes advantage of other disciplines, further language training, and study abroad opportunities.

Introduction

The subfield of International Relations is secure within existing Departments of Political Science. At the same time, more colleges and universities are offering a separate degree in International Studies. International Studies is usually housed in Departments of Political Science because of the primacy of international politics in this curriculum, but it is often considered to be an interdisciplinary major featuring significant coursework in language, history, and economics, among others. International Studies majors expect to work and live in a context beyond their native experience, and thus they need the tools supplied by several disciplines to succeed linguistically and culturally as well as professionally after graduation. In higher education, where distinct departments and disciplines create the contours of knowledge and power, achieving a truly interdisciplinary program is a continuing challenge: how should curriculum committees move beyond simply cobbling together a patchwork of courses from various disciplines, without overburdening the faculty and administration? How to avoid the charge that interdisciplinary programs are by definition less rigorous than discipline-based programs? In this study, we analyze the best practices of International Studies programs and offer our advice on creating an interdisciplinary program that meets the needs of students, faculty, and administrators in the twenty-first century.

This summary and analysis of building an interdisciplinary International Studies major is based on experience we gained by serving on a committee at Xavier University. We compared Xavier's existing program to eight competitive institutions, thirteen benchmark institutions, and seventeen other Jesuit institutions based on information published on these school's websites. [1] We also spoke with individuals who direct some of these programs. [2] While the schools we compared were Jesuit or private institutions, we would expect them to have little difference in terms of their International Studies programs from those schools included in earlier surveys.

Finally, we completed a literature review of recent publications relating to International Studies. International Studies is an increasingly popular major. Despite their increasing popularity, these programs are quite diverse in terms of their features and course offerings. [3] The findings of these studies confirm the diversity of curriculum we found in our own survey. Programs rely on numerous and varying required and optional courses with a myriad of concentrations that focus on a region of the world or intellectual theme. Because of the diversity of course offerings, there is an on-going debate over the ability of International Studies to develop as a...

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