Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.
Title of course:
Borders and Battles: The Historical Roots of Geopolitical Conflict
What prompted the idea for the course?
I got the idea for the course when I noticed that all of the other history courses I taught – on India, the Middle East and the British Empire – featured major border conflicts. These conflicts arose from a variety of issues, whether the borders were historically ill-conceived, politically disputed or cut across contested resources.
As all of these borders were drawn by the British in the closing days of the empire, they reflect a critical aspect of decolonization. So I decided to abandon the conventional geographical focus of the history course and instead design a course that examines the theme of embattled borders, across different time periods and places.
A Pennsylvania state senator and former Republican gubernatorial candidate whose support for Donald Trump drew him to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 is suing a Canadian university and nearly two dozen academics
Journalists at a news site that covers issues facing the Haitian community in the United States say they've been harassed and intimidated with racist messages for covering the false story about immigrants eating the pets of people in Springfield, Ohio
Communities nationwide are being battered by a wave of school shooting threats, with emergency notifications and group chat messages sparking parents’ fears their child’s school could be the next Parkland or Uvalde
Canada is further reducing the number of study permits it will grant to foreign students and tightening eligibility for work permits in a bid to cut down on