POLS316: IR SEminar - Politics of Outer Space
Week 1
January 10th
Introduction to the course and discussion of the syllabus.
DOWNLOAD SYLLABUS HERE
Assignment Due Jan 16th: Write a 300 word reflection on what you think the role of humans in space should be. Upload to Laulima.
January 12th
No Reading Assigned; Class Lecture
WEEK 2
January 17th
Carl Sagan, “Space Exploration as a Human Enterprise: The Scientific Interest”
January 19th
Hannah Arendt, ‘The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man’
WEEK 3
January 24th
Lisa Messiri, Placing Outer Space, Introduction, ‘From Outer Space to Outer Place’ and Ch. 1 ‘Visualizing Alien Worlds’
January 26th
Daniel Sage, “Framing Space: A Popular Geopolitics of American Manifest Destiny in Outer Space”
WEEK 4
January 31st
Deudney, Dark Skies, Chapter 1 “The Promise of Space Revisited”
February 2nd
Chapter 2, “Questions, Debates and Frameworks”
Week 5
February 7th
Asif Siddiqi, “Competing Technologies, National(ist) Narratives and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration”
February 9th
Nat Muller, “Lunar Dreams: Space Travel, Nostalgia, and Retrofuturism in A Space Exodus and The Lebanese Rocket Society”
WeEK 6
February 14th
Kim McQuaid, “Race, Gender, and Space Exploration: A Chapter in the Social History of the Space Age”
February 16th
Marie Lathers: "No Official Requirement": Women, History, Time, and the U.S. Space Program”
WEEK 7
February 21st
Smiles, “The Settler Logics of (Outer) Space”
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Becoming Martian: Space Travel Through the Middle Passage
February 23rd
M. Jane Young: “‘Pity the Indians of Outer Space’: Native American Views of the Space Program”
WEEK 8
February 28th
Wright et al, “Dukarr lakarama: Listening to Guwak, talking back to space colonization”
March 2nd
Maile, “On Being Late: Cruising Mauna Kea and Unsettling Technoscientific Conquest in Hawai‘i”
WEEK 9
March 7th and 9th: Movie Week, TBD
WEEK 10
SPRING RECESS
NO CLASS
WEEK 11
March 21st
Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (UN Office for Outer Space Affairs)
March 23rd
In class activity on UN Treaty on Outer Space
WEEK 12
March 28th
Deudney, Dark Skies, Ch. 3, ‘Technological Imaginaries’
March 30th
Ch. 3 continued and Ch. 5 ‘Absolute Weapons’
WEEK 13
April 4th
Deudney, Dark Skies Ch. 6, ‘Limitless Frontiers’
April 6th
Deudney, Ch. 7, ‘Superpower Restraints, Planetary Security and Earth Identity”
WEEK 14
April 11th
David Valentine, “Exit Strategy: Profit, Cosmology, and the Future of Humans in Space”
April 13th
Grove, “‘Welcome to Mars’: space colonization, anticipatory authoritarianism, and the labour of hope”
WEEK 15
April 18th
Film in class, TBD
April 20th
Wright and Oman-Reagan, “Visions of Human Futures in Space”
WEEK 16
April 25th
Deudney, Chapter 9, “Earth Space, Planetary Geopolitics and World Goverments' and Ch. 10, “Solar Space, Island Earth and the Ends of Humanity”
April 27th
Final Project Presentations - attendance mandatory.
WEEK 17
May 2nd
Final Project Presentations - attendance mandatory. Last Day of Instruction