A New Yearlong Course: The Political Economy of Civil War and Peacebuilding

One challenge of graduate school is building long-lasting relationships with faculty members. In the hustle and bustle of the typical semester, it can be difficult to build the kind of mentorship that many graduate students–and faculty members–desire. This year, Professor Terrence Lyons and I built a new solution to this dilemma by offering an innovative, yearlong, and team-taught course focusing on the political economy of civil war and peacebuilding. MS students Lindsay Burr, Barre Hussen, Dilafruz Khonikboyeva, Beth Rivard, Van Schmidt, David Younes, and Alvaro Zarco teamed up with PhD students Charles Martin-Shields and Ellyn Yakowenko to take the course, meeting weekly from late August to early May.

CONF 751 offered students a deeper look into the political economy of conflict. Each week, students read a book or set of articles focusing on different aspects of civil war and peacebuilding. Rather than relying on many of the “old favorites,” we pushed our students to read newer, cutting-edge work; the oldest book for the class was written in 2000. Our students read work by Jeremy Weinstein, Stathis Kalyvas, and Page Fortna, among others. Together, we worked our way through a series of topics on the origins, dynamics, and termination of civil war in the fall. In the spring, we turned to the political economy of peacebuilding. The areas we discussed include the economic origins of civil war, insurgent organizations and collective action, genocide, security sector reform, post-war democratization, and post-conflict justice. Rather than lectures, we focused class time on a free-flowing discussion, in which students debated the theoretical, methodological, and normative implications of the readings.

The course also encouraged a close working relationship between students and faculty particularly by me and Terrence mentoring students as they developed their research interests. Our students took the entire academic year to write a long paper that included original research on a topic of their choice under the direction of one of us. In the fall semester, students defined the literature they wished to address and wrote an abstract and research proposal that they presented to their classmates. In the spring semester, students completed their proposed research and wrote a finished product for presentation in the last week of class. This year’s projects took on a wide variety of topics, including the economic impact of UN Peacekeeping Operations; the relationship between food insecurity and both riots and civil war; competing narratives on civil conflict in Tajikistan as seen through social media; and the importance of capital cities as a political symbol during civil war. Our students have used the project as a springboard for their MS theses or doctoral dissertations and some will be submitted to journals and professional conferences.

As evidence of the strong esprit de corps built over 28 weeks together, students and faculty headed to O’Sullivan’s Irish Pub after our last class meeting, eager to spend one last hour together before officially ending the academic year.

CONF 751 will be offered again in 2013-2014 with three key improvements. First, students will register for 4 credits per semester, for 8 credits overall. Second, we will add several innovative experiential learning modules to the course, especially trips to meet with peacebuilders in the Washington, DC area. Third, we will organize a series of public lectures by scholars engaged in research on the political economy of civil war and peacebuilding that will supplement the classroom discussions.

Interested students can e-mail Terrence Lyons ([email protected]) or Thomas Flores ([email protected]) with any questions about the course.