America and the World: Issues in the Teaching of U.S. Foreign Policy

Abstract

in world affairs and the axis around which so much of global politics revolves, there can be few subjects as politically central or intellectually challenging as U.S. foreign policy. In this review essay, I examine some of the ways that U. S. foreign policy is (and might be) conceptualized in political science courses both in the United States and elsewhere; I consider several approaches to teaching-mostly at the undergraduate level-and explore the theoretical, historical, and normative assumptions that structure courses. My observations are based on an analysis of 29 syllabi in the subfieldmost of them supplied by the staff of Perspectives on Politicsthat come from private and public research universities as well as liberal arts colleges. Most of the syllabi are recent, but some