Course Descriptions:
DBT 101- Academic Debate and Critical Thinking: The course aims to develop student’s skills and confidence in the areas of public speaking, research, debate and creative performance. The course will be logic and argumentation as well as fundamentals of effective public speaking. The topics of this course train the students on using sources for academic communication, putting knowledge into good use, and raising academic questions and answering questions in an academic way.
IRD 111- Academic English I: This course provides core critical thinking, reading, research and writing skills transferable to academic disciplines. Students practice various forms of academic writing, including summary, critical analysis, and written research. Analysis of textual rhetoric, discourse, and style, along with academic essay-writing, develops self-awareness of methods of inquiry, critique and reflection.
IT 103- Information Technology I: : Introduction to Windows, Windows Commands, How the windows commands work, Introduction to Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Power Point, Project of Microsoft Power point.
KUR 105- Kurdology: The territorial extent of Kurdistan, the ethnic and geographical extent of Kurdistan, Numerical extent of the Kurds, the geography of Kurdistan, Physical aspect, the living landscape and habitat, the human aspect, an anthropological profile of Kurdistan.
Origins and pre-Islamic history, the Islamic period up to 1920, from 1920 to the present day, the fundamental structures of Kurdish society, the Kurdish family, tribal organization, language and folklore.
IRD 109- Introduction to Political Sciences: This course is an introduction to the history of political theory. The course will cover many of the great texts of the Western tradition. These texts raise important questions about the nature of individual rights, the roots of government authority, the circumstances of legitimate revolution, the justification of religious tolerance, and the meaning of political ideals such as liberty, equality, and justice.
BUS 113 Fundamentals of Economics: This is an introductory microeconomics course. The aim of the course is to develop an understanding of elementary microeconomic analysis and its applications. By the end of the term, the student will have acquired a basic understanding of the main microeconomic topics, including analysis of the consumer, the firm, the economics of public sector and product markets. The material covered as part of this course will help students to organize their ideas about economics.
IRD 115 Basics of Sociology: This course seeks to introduce to students major perspectives, central issue sand research methods in sociology, provides a broad overview of sociology and how it applies to everyday life, major theoretical perspectives and concepts are presented, including sociological imagination, culture, deviance, inequality, social change, and social structure.
KUR 106- Kurdology II: This course aims to provide knowledge about the cultural, social, economic and political understanding of Kurdish population in Iraq and other spread regions.
DBT 101- Academic Debate and Critical Thinking II: This course is designed to develop students’ abilities and skills in academic communication and debate. The topics of this course train the students on using sources for academic communication, putting knowledge into good use, and raising academic questions and answering questions in an academic way. The course also aims to teach students how to accept and respect differing opinions, and how to conduct academic arguments.
IRD 112 ENG- Academic English II: The course aims to develop the students’ abilities to synthesize and evaluate information and conduct basic, independent research. The central basis of the course is to consolidate students’ academic approach to thinking, reading, speaking and writing and language usage.
IRD 108 LAW- Constitutional Law: This course provides a general introduction to constitutional law. It begins with a brief introduction to the history and structure of the Constitution, the nature of judicial review, and recurring themes of constitutional decision-making. The course focuses on the allocation of powers and responsibilities among governmental institutions, including the separation and coordination of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions at the federal level.
IRD 114 ECO- Fundamentals of Management: This course presents a balanced view of business; the strengths, weaknesses, successes, failures, problems, and challenges. It provides students a base for more advanced courses. The objective of this course is to provide students a clear and complete description of the concepts underlying business and illustrate the dynamism and liveliness of business organizations and people who operate them with real life examples.
IRD 116 CIH – Civilization History: This course is an introduction to ancient and medieval world history, focusing on social, political and cultural aspects of various civilizations. It covers the period from the stateless societies to the early modern period; it endeavors to make a survey of basic world civilizations during the period under question. This course will emphasize the way in which history is researched and written and will foster an understanding of how other related disciplines assist in historical analysis.
IRD 201 PDH- Political and Diplomatic History I: The course aims to help students understand the machinery of diplomacy and its role in contemporary international society, enabling them to recognize historical continuities, changes and innovations. The introductory section will be devoted to classic authors of diplomatic theory, traditional approaches viewing diplomacy as a specialized form of statecraft and major developments from the rise of resident embassies and foreign ministries to the emergence of new actors.
IRD 203- History of Political Thought I: This course examines the formation and development of political ideas, from Greek political philosophy to modern political thought. Emphasis is placed on the relationship between theory and practice in political life. This course analyzes the nuances and traces the development of western political thought from classical Greece up to seventeenth-century northern Europe. Particular attention will be given to the big questions facing every generation concerning the nature of political association and the good society. Students will become familiar with each major political thinker, the context in which they wrote, and influence upon the history of ideas.
IRD 207 STA- Statistics for Social Sciences: This course covers basic descriptive and inferential statistical techniques used in analyzing social science research data. The student becomes familiar with ways to organize and analyze data, communicate research results, translate statistical jargon into meaningful English, and understand basic theories underlying statistics, e.g., elementary probability theory.
IRD 202 PDH- Political and Diplomatic History II: This course presents an overview of the concepts, approaches and enduring questions of political and diplomatic history. It provides students with a foundation of knowledge and analytical skills necessary to understand political and diplomatic history. Political and Diplomatic history tends to be more concerned with the history of diplomacy whereas international relations deals more with current events and creating a model intended to shed explanatory light on international politics.
IRD204 HPT- History of political thought II: This course examines the formation and development of political ideas, from Greek political philosophy to modern political thought. Emphasis is placed on the relationship between theory and practice in political life.
IRD 206 Political history of Iraq: This course examines the formation and development of political ideas, about political history of Iraq. Emphasis is placed on the relationship between theory and practice in political life. This course is a survey of the origins of major intellectual currents and ideologies in Iraqi politics through the ideas of prominent figures from Iraqi period.
IRD303- International law I: This course examines the theory and practice of international law, including efforts to creative effective legal means to define, proscribe, and punish war crimes, crimes against humanity, and terrorism. We discuss the negotiation, ratification, and enforcement of treaties and study multinational legal institutions such as the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court.
IRD309- International organizations: This course provides an introduction to the study of the international organization in world politics. The focus is on the United Nations and other selected organizations. The course also explains the typology of international organizations, within their ever-increasing variety; the evolution of international organizations in relation to the developments in the international system; development and nature of the principles, structures. Moreover, the course presents a survey of these organizations and continues to examine the power, personality, accountability of organizations, the process and the value of making decisions.
IRD 307- Theories of internationals relations: This course examines major traditions in the discipline of international relations. Students are introduced to the study of the causes of war and the conditions of peace, international law and organizations, international political economy, great power politics, and foreign-policy decision making. The main aim of the course is to provide the students with the necessary skills and knowledge to identify the hidden assumptions made in the literature and the official and the journalistic discourses, and make legitimate, coherent, and sound arguments.
IRD 304- International law II: The objectives of this course are to provide a deeper understanding of international law and international legal process. The topics to be examined include classical as well as unorthodox themes as part of international law. The classical themes include the law of the sea, state responsibility, and peaceful settlement of disputes. The course also deals with various cases and disputes which have some bearing on Iraq’s international disputes.
IRD 306- International political economy: Economics is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of scarce resources. This course will clearly show students how politics and economics come together in today’s global environment. Likewise, the course will also demonstrate how an understanding of IPE can help students make sense of global news, business investments, and government policies. Political economy considers the role that the state plays in such production, distribution, and consumption.
IRD 401- Research methodology: This course provides an overview of research methods, designs, and techniques. Course content will include applying public information and research-based knowledge of issues and trends and use appropriate assessment strategies and research methodologies to address authentic issues in education. Students will also explore the use of action research as a means to improve teaching and learning.
IRD212- Human Rights: This course explores contending approaches to human rights, the role of institutions and organizations in setting human rights agendas, and human rights problems and policies in international politics. Moreover, this course is designed, first, to give an account of the three categories of human rights, namely classical rights, economic and social rights, and collective rights, and, second, to explore the role of human rights in modern international politics.
IRD 405 World politics: The course examines the political and administrative processes through which world policy is formulated, adopted, implemented, and evaluated. Also the course is Acquainting students with the history of international relations from the birth of the modern states in the 17th century to the outbreak of the Second World War; with due emphasis on the development and changes in the European balance of power system, imperialism, and nationalism.
IRD 302- International Security II: In the second semester, we aim to build on the previous foundation (theories and concepts) in exploring the institutional framework and practical challenges currently exercising security analysis. We will examine relevant regional and global institutions as they play significant roles in security policies. Then finally, we will study ten (10) key challenges related to armaments.
IRD 312- Political Participation: This course focuses on the study of political participation (in particular, non-electoral political participation: membership in political groups, contacting, political consumption, and protest politics) and its consequences for democracies. Political participation is a central element of democratic systems. We will explore the meaning of political participation, the evolution of the concept and its measurement, and the micro and macro-level explanations of citizen behavior and cross-national variation in levels of activism. Moreover, we will dedicate monographic sessions on protest and social movements, and new forms of activism such as political consumption and politics through internet.
IRD 404- Middle East Politics: This course aims to give graduate level students a deeper understanding of the complex nature of politics in the Middle East. In this class we will look at the relationship between Islam/secularism and contemporary politics. Students should be familiar with major thinkers of the Middle Eastern today and of the past
IRD 406- Globalization: This course explores changes in the international economy and their effects on domestic politics, economy, and society. Is globalization really a new phenomenon? Is it irreversible? What are effects on wages and inequality, on social safety nets, on production, and innovation? How does it affect relations between developed countries and developing countries? How globalization affects democracy? These are some of the key issues that will be examined.
IRD 412- Thesis: Each student will work directly with a faculty advisor on an independent research project. The student’s role is to identify an appropriate research question, develop a systematic research plan to address it, and then execute this plan themselves, collecting, analyzing and interpreting the resulting data and writing them up in standard scholarly format (the thesis). That is, the students are ultimately responsible for all steps in the research process. The faculty adviser’s role is to provide guidance in these various steps where appropriate, such as in helping to identify the research question and in providing feedback on the student’s proposed research design, its execution, and the data.
IRD 438, Humanitarian Intervention: This course is designed to give students all the skills and knowledge required to get a position with an NGO in Kurdistan or abroad after your graduation. Over the course of the semester students will be building a humanitarian project designed for an emergency situation either man made or natural disaster (the case will be chosen with the student according to actuality). Building this project will give you both theoretical knowledge of humanitarian intervention (how and why they exist, difference between state and non-state humanitarian intervention) and practical skills of how to implement such action as a non-state actor.
IRD402- International Negotiation and Mediation
The scope of this course is international negotiation and mediation covering the main theoretical approaches in the field. It will trace negotiation and mediation at the international level with a particular focus on the 2oth Century historical development of the field. The role of international organization, chief among them, the UN in mediation efforts in the post-Cold War era is also covered. The state of negotiation and mediation in a globalised world given particular attention with yet a special coverage of the notion of global governance’ and its effectiveness in coping with the ever increasing challenges and threats to the international security, peace and stability.
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International Relations and Diplomacy Course Description