Transfer Student Courses in RC Interdivisional (Division 867)

Winter Term, 2000 (January 5 - April 26, 2000)

To see what Transfer Student courses have been added or changed in RC Interdivisional this week go to What's New This Week.

Most RC courses are open to LS&A students and may be used to meet distribution requirements. In most instances, RC students receive priority for RC course waitlists.

RC sections of LS&A Courses

Section 004 – Anton Chekov as Dramatist

Instructor(s): Ivanitskaya

Prerequisites & Distribution: (2). (Excl). Offered mandatory credit/no credit. May be repeated for a total of eight credits.

Credits: (2).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This mini-course will give students an opportunity to explore the world of the great Russian dramatist, Anton Chekhov, by studying some of his plays in the original Russian and doing some scene performance in Russian. Classes will be taught partly in Russian and partly in English, and they will be devoted both to the understanding of Chekhov's plays and to the learning of techniques of Russian theatre. Students should have enough background in the Russian language to be able to read Russian texts and understand spoken Russian.

Section 001 – History and Politics of Chemical and Biological Warfare Disarmament. Meets with Political Science 498.002

Instructor(s): Susan Wright (spwright@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (Excl).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/disarm.html

The political problems of chemical and biological warfare and disarmament have achieved salience as the result of several developments since the end of the Cold War. The most spectacular have been the discoveries that both Iraq and the former Soviet Union developed large BW capabilities, both countries stockpiling daunting quantities of biological and toxin agents, and both largely eluding discovery, if not strong suspicion, until the revelations of the weapons programs provided by well-informed defectors.

Also in the 1990s, the Aum Shinrikio attack in the Tokyo subway underscored the dangers of terrorists acquiring and using, or threatening to use, chemical or biological weapons in cities. On the disarmament side, the completion of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1992 signified the willingness of major states to provide relatively high levels of transparency and to submit their military and industrial establishments to intrusive inspections under a regime designed to deter development, production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons. But efforts to develop a parallel regime for biological weaponry confront thorny problems, especially how to provide sufficient transparency for credible assurance concerning disarmament in the face of strong military and industrial interests in maintaining secrecy.

This seminar provides historical and political perspectives on these and other developments in this area. It begins with analysis of the efforts in the UN General Assembly and the Eighteen-Nation Conference on Disarmament to rein in the expanding chemical and biological programs of the two super-powers and to establish a norm of commitment to chemical and biological disarmament in the 1960s. It ends with a focus on the problems and challenges today, with emphasis on the Gulf War and international responses to Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs, on linkages between biological and chemical weaponry and nuclear weapons, and on the global politics of the present CB disarmament regime. Specific themes throughout the seminar will be the roles of science and of scientists in the biological and chemical fields; secrecy and reliable reassurance about national intentions; linkages between biological and chemical weaponry and nuclear weapons and the problem of controlling weapons of mass destruction in general; and the importance of understanding non-Western perspectives. This seminar also aims to develop theoretical and methodological awareness in approaching and dealing with these questions.

The introductory sessions will discuss some of the principal types of framework used in political science (e.g. realism, political economy, regime theory, feminism), the importance of choices concerning perspective and of understanding political issues in relation to a specific regional setting, and the problems posed by a positivist orientation to the questions under discussion. The seminar also provides training in research techniques and strategies, with emphasis on strategies to find and use primary source materials. Primary sources will be used as course readings where possible and approaches to interpreting these materials will be emphasized.