NATIONAL CHENGCHI UNIVERSITY

LEARNING GLOBAL POLITICS

THROUGH MASS MEDIA AND
CINEMA
Course Proposal for undergraduate Students

Moises Lopes de Souza
2014





Course Title: LEARNING GLOBAL POLITICS THROUGH MASS MEDIA
AND CINEMA

Instructor: Moises Lopes de Souza
Phd. Student at the International Program in Asia-Pacific Studies (IDAS) National
Chengchi University. Member of the Group of Asia Studies of the Center of Research
In International Politics, University of Sao Paulo. Associate Researcher of the Center
of Latin America Trade and Economy- Chihlee Institute of Technology.
Email: moises.asiapacific@gmail.com
Mobile phone: 0983 384 424

Course Introduction
This course will investigate the various means, both direct and indirect, through which
the mass media and public opinion interact to influence the foreign policy process.
Every day, the mass media brings the most important topcis of international relations
to the general public. As result of the globalization process, the debater on
international politics became part of our daily rather a specific concern of the
academia or governments. The course will approach in a multidisciplinary perspective
the important issues of global politics accessing them through the mass media as
newspapers, magazines, TV news channel, social networks and movies. However, the
course will always search for its relationship with the IR theories.
How does the public learn about foreign policy? What are the impact of the images
produced by the mass medias about leaders and events in the the way we understand
international politics? How Hollywood has reflecting the main topics of international
relations through the time?

Aims and objectives

This course is designed to introduce the undergraduate students the basic
understanding about the hot current topics of global politics thorugh the mass media.
It aims to provide the students the basic knowledge and analytical skills in analyzing
the topics of international politics through movies, magazines, newspapers and social
Medias. The course will be based in interaction between theories of international
relations and international mass media analytical tools to understand the controversial
in global politics in areas as economy, security, religion, culture and environment. As
students nowadays spend huge amount of time accessing information from different
Medias sources, the course intends give them basic abilities to use their audio-visual
activities/entertainment routine as a learning window opportunity by equipping them
with resource to follow the hot topics of global politics in a critical perspective.
Course Requirements
1. One Course essay (about 5,000 to 10,000) on a topic choosing will submitted at
the end of semester. In addition, a one-page synopsis of your final term paper will
be due at the mid-term.
2. Each student will be responsible for presenting one of the readings followed by a
magazine article, newspapers article or movie and leading the class in discussion
of that weeks topic.
3. Course grades will be calculated as follows: presentation and class
participation-50%; course essay 50%.

Tentative Syllabus
Part I : I mages, perceptions and emotions.
Week 1: Winners narrative: a single perspective
Week 2: Images: the construction of the enemies and heroes
Week 3: The role of the ideology
Week 4: The role of the culture
Week 5: The media as tool for foreign policy:
Week 6: Images of War
Week 7: ThePerception on Economy
Week 8: The fear of Religious
Week 9: Midterm
Part I I : Movies and their times
Week 10: How the movies have represented the most dramatic moments of
international politics?
Week 11: the construction of enemies: Soviet Union, Japan, China and Asia.
Week 12: The dilemmas: war, globalization, uncertainty, economic crisis, and
environmental issues.
Week 13: Historical events
Week 14: Cultural Narratives
Week 15: Movies and IR Theories
Week 16: IR and movies beyond Hollywood: Europe, Asia and Latin America

Part III: Social Media and International Politics
Week 17: Facebook and the role of the social Medias in international politics
Week 18: Final paper

Tentative Bibliography
Dominique Moisi. The geopolitics of emotion : how cultures of fear, humiliation, and
hope are reshaping the world. New York : Anchor Books, 2009.

Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Rana Mitter Ruptured historie (Editors). War, Memory, and the
post-Cold War in Asia. London: Harvard Press, 2009.

Jervis, Robert. The logic of Images in International Relations. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1989.

Li Zhang. News Media and EU-China relations. New York : Palgrave Macmillan,
2011.

Jason C. Flanagan. Imagining the Enemy : American presidential war rhetoric from
Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush. Claremont: Regina Books, 2009.

David Scott. China and the international system, 1840-1949 : Power, Presence, and
Perceptions in a Century of Humiliation. Albany: State University of New York Press,
2008.

Jerrold M. Post. Leaders and their Followers in a Dangerous World : The Psychology
of Political Behavior. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2004.

Thomas U. Berger. War, guilt, and world politics after World War II. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Robin Andersen: A Century of Media, A Century of War. New York : Peter Lang,
2007.

Evelin Lindner. Making Enemies : Humiliation and International Conflict. Westport :
Praeger Security International, 2006.

Stefan Engert and Alexander Spencer. International Relations at the Movies: Teaching
and Learning about International Politics through Film. Perspectives Vol. 17, No. 1
2009.

Funderburk, Charles (1978) Politics and the Movie, Teaching Political Science 6 (1):
111116

Gregg, Robert W. (1998) International Relations on Film. London: Lynne Rienner.

Gregg, Robert W. (1999) The Ten Best Films about International Relations, World
Policy Journal No. 16: 129134. .

Holden, Gerard (2006) Cinematic IR, the Sublime, and the Indistinctness of Art,
Millennium: Journal of International Studies 34 (3): 793818.

Kiersey, Nicholas J. and Neumann, Iver B. (2013) Battlestar Galactica and
International Relations (Popular Culture and World Politics), Oxford, Routledge.

Lisle, D., and Pepper, A. (2005). The new face of global Hollywood: Black Hawk
Down and the politics of meta sovereignty. Cultural Politics 1 (2), pp. 165192

Mitchell, William J. Thomas (1994) Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual
Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Robb, D. (2004). Operation Hollywood. New York: Prometheus.

Rorty, R. (1967) Metaphilosophical Difficulties of Linguistic Philosophy, in idem
(ed.), The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method (With Two Retrospective
Essays), the University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1992: 139.

Valantin, J.M. (2005). Hollywood, the Pentagon and Washington. London: Anthem
Press.

Weber, Cynthia (2001) The Highs and Lows of Teaching IR Theory: Using Popular
Films for Theoretical Critique, International Studies Perspective 2 (3): 281287.

Weldes, Jutta (1999) Going Cultural: Star Trek, State Action, and Popular Culture,
Millennium: Journal of International Studies 28 (1): 117134.