An Interdepartmental Program in Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Studies

Last updated: October 21, 2021 at 2:26 PM

Since the end of World War II, peace, conflict, and coexistence studies has emerged as an interdisciplinary area of inquiry drawing on social science, the humanities, the creative arts, and science in efforts to understand reasons for war and possible ways of resolving conflicts without resorting to violence. In the last few years, for many people the primary focus of inquiry is shifting from the Cold War and the nuclear threat to conflict resolution in small and large contexts. Along with the larger goal of ending war altogether, the Brandeis program reflects this tendency.

This is a time to examine the many meanings of "security," to investigate the nature of power and political participation, and to develop ideas and ways of addressing conflicts that honor the integrity of all parties involved. This is a time, in other words, to learn alternatives to violence and a time to learn the ways of disarmament and ending of war.

Learning Goals

From violence to non-violence: Since the end of World War II, Peace Studies has emerged as an interdisciplinary area of inquiry drawing on social science, the humanities, the creative arts, and science in efforts to understand reasons for war and ways of resolving conflicts without resorting to violence. Since the end of the Cold War, the primary focus of inquiry has shifted from US-Soviet relations and the nuclear threat to theories and practices of nonviolent conflict resolution in contexts all the way from nation-states to organizations to interpersonal violence, to violence and peace within the self. Along with the larger goal of ending war altogether, the Brandeis program reflects this tendency.

This is a time to examine the many meanings of “security.” The traditional concept of “national security” means nations each protecting their own “interests” and safety against those of others whose projects they find incompatible and/or competitive with their own. From Peace Studies, we learn the concept of “common security,” meaning that no one is truly safe until everyone is truly safe. It is through cooperation, empathy, and compassion, rather than military might and aggressive free market practices that common security will become possible.

Just as war is an invention that appeared in history about 13,000 years ago, so now is it time to invent peace, peace within nations, peace among nations, peace among peoples, and peace within ourselves.

Toward social justice: We in our field seek to investigate the nature of power, political participation, release from domination and exploitation, and the self’s relation to all this. We seek to develop ideas and nonviolent ways of addressing conflicts that honor the integrity and needs of all parties involved. It is time, in other words, to learn alternatives to violence and a time to learn the ways of ending war.

We distinguish in our field between “negative peace” and “positive peace.” The former simply means a condition of no armed hostilities. Many nations adjoining others exist in a cold peace (or negative peace) with each other. Positive peace means identifying the conditions of antagonism that can lead to war (e.g., differential access to resources, markets, honor, and the necessities of life) and creating ways to end those antagonisms so as to make war illogical and unthinkable.

We also distinguish in our field between “war culture” and “peace culture.” In a sort of anthropological way, all institutions and practices that celebrate and promote violence (e.g., much of the content of media, political and legal systems whose goals are winning rather than justice, fiercely competitive sports, super aggressive economic activities, and the like) constitute war culture. Those that promote and celebrate peace (e.g., cooperation, joint creative activity, empathic and compassionate relations to individuals and collectivities) represent peace culture.

One PAX requirement is a senior honors thesis or an internship. The latter, chosen by most program members, is meant to emphasize the experiential/praxis orientation of the program. Our internship students routinely report the importance of working on PAX issues in the field.

Core Skills

True to its interdisciplinarity, PAX encourages students to learn about war and peace from history, politics, sociology, anthropology, economics, the arts, the humanities, and the sciences. As students take courses in the various disciplines, they learn their methods of inquiry.

It is our expectation that PAX minors and independent PAX majors learn to:

Ask significant questions about how each discipline offers insights and scholarship on issues of war and peace;
Know theoretical approaches to the many disciplines related to our topic and the investigations that follow from them;
Tease out hitherto unquestioned assumptions about war and peace, our economic system, human nature, masculinity, and more;
Appreciate and understand subjective/emotional/social psychological as well as structural components of social processes and social movements;
Conduct competent original research on war and peace related issues;
Write a senior honors thesis on a peace-related topic or do an internship in a peace-related organization, to exemplify and promote the praxis part of PAX.

Knowledge

We expect that students completing the minor or independent interdisciplinary major in Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Studies will learn and deepen their understanding of the following:

How war arises in history and how it might end;
A critical analysis of arguments for the inevitability of war and for possibilities of peace;
Varieties of ways conflicts have traditionally been solved;
Evolving forms of nonviolent conflict resolution and their many successes;
Similarities and differences between physical violence and “structural violence” including assaults on the environment;
Differences between national security and common security;
The proliferation and complexities of components of war culture;
The proliferation and complexities of components of peace culture;
Images and arguments for the possible imminence of paradigm shift, the great turning, the great transformation, and other suggestions that major change, necessary for human survival, may be under way;
The relationship between inner peace and outer peace.

After Graduation

Some PAX graduates go on to years and/or careers as social activists. Some do graduate work in nonviolent conflict resolution and wind up working in the field professionally. International students in PAX have commonly returned to their countries and engaged full- or part-time in conflict resolution and other kinds of activist work.

How to Become a Minor

Committee

Requirements for the Minor

Students are to take six required courses, configured this way:

Two core requirements.
1. SOC 119a (Deconstructing War, Building Peace).
2. Either PAX 89a or 92a (Internship in Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Studies) or a senior honors thesis.
  
  The internship consists of at least ten hours a week in a social-change organization in the greater Boston area, elsewhere in the United States, or if the student is abroad, an appropriate equivalent. The intern is supervised by a PAX professor or staff person, keeps a daily journal, presents and does the reading of a bibliography on the topic of the internship and its larger framework, and writes a paper of fifteen to twenty pages at the end of the internship. The student is expected to meet weekly or biweekly with the supervisor and to e-mail weekly or biweekly if doing the work away from Brandeis. Internships are organized around, but not limited to, those we find through the Hiatt Career Center.
  
  Internships in the sociology department (SOC 92a and SOC 89a) with a PAX focus will be evaluated for credit toward the PAX minor on a case-by-case basis.
  
  The senior thesis is undertaken in the student's major, on a topic central to peace, conflict, and coexistence studies. With the department's permission, a member of the PAX faculty committee will serve on and represent the PAX program on the thesis committee.
Two or more core electives: at least two courses (and up to four) from this list. Core electives must be taken in at least two different departments.

Core electives include courses that offer critical analyses of violence and nonviolence and that consider information, ideas, and examples of productive ways of resisting violence and working toward peace and justice (what in the peace studies field is called "positive peace," as distinct from "negative peace," which is the absence of war but not of conditions that appear to lead to war). These courses offer perspectives on major institutions and possible alternatives, explore some strategies for change, and encourage students to envision and work toward a world based more on positive peace than on negative peace or war.
Maximum of two related electives: No more than two courses from this list can count to meet requirements for the minor, and they must be taken in different departments.

These courses relate directly or indirectly to international, domestic, organizational, intergroup, interpersonal, or personal conflict and also include consideration of perspectives that promote understanding, reconciliation, and transformation. They need not focus on violence and nonviolence, positive peace, or encouraging students to envision positive peace. Students may apply courses from the "core electives" list that they have not taken to fulfill core requirements to this requirement.
Students are urged to take at least one course from a school other than social science to fulfill their PAX requirements.
Students may petition the PAX committee for special consideration of courses not listed here that the student wishes to propose as appropriate for her/his PAX minor.
No grade below a C- will be given credit toward the minor.
No course taken pass/fail may count toward the minor requirements.

Courses of Instruction

Expand All

(1-99) Primarily for Undergraduate Students

PAX 89a Internship in Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Studies
[ wi ]
Prerequisite: Students must complete an eight- to ten-week full-time internship during the summer before the semester in which the student plans to enroll in this course.
Weekly seminar for students who have undertaken a summer internship related to peace, conflict, coexistence, and related international issues. Examples of internship sites include arts organizations, international courts and tribunals, human rights organizations, and democracy organizations. Students write extensively about their internship experience in the context of previous academic work that they have done in PAX, politics, anthropology and other disciplines. Usually offered every semester.
Gordie Fellman

PAX 92a Internship in Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Studies
Usually offered every year.
Staff

PAX 97a Group Independent Study
Offers students opportunities to participate in, learn from and contribute to an on-going research project. The course instructor, Dr. Cynthia Cohen, is working with the African-American musician, educator, activist, folklorist and cultural worker Jane Wilburn Sapp, to document Sapp’s forty-year cultural work practice. The project will culminate in a series of performance/presentations, a multimedia disc, a book and a website. Usually offered every second year.
Cynthia Cohen

PAX 98a Independent Study
Staff

(100-199) For Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students

PAX 120b Inner Peace and Outer Peace
[ ss ]
Builds a practical relationship between "inner and outer" peace-building. This experiential class fosters an individual meditative practice while exploring effective collective work toward conflict transformation at many levels: family, interpersonal, communal, national, global, and environmental. Energetic in-class interactions--supported by readings and written assignments--aim to clarify how outer and inner efforts can complement and connect with each other in the peace process. Usually offered every year.
Peter Gould

PAX 160a Stopping War: Analyzing Anti-War Movements
[ ss ]
Examines the history and effectiveness of peace and anti-war movements, with a focus primarily on critically assessing the philosophies and activism of anti-war organizations in the U.S. We'll practice skills utilized by peace practitioners, and conclude with analysis about the future of peace movements. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

PAX Core Courses

PAX 92a Internship in Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Studies
Usually offered every year.
Staff

SOC 119a Deconstructing War, Building Peace
[ ss ]
Ponders the possibility of a major "paradigm shift" under way from adversarialism and war to mutuality and peace. Examines war culture and peace culture and points in between, with emphases on the role of imagination in social change, growing global interdependence, and political, economic, gender, social class, and social psychological aspects of war and peace. Usually offered every year.
Gordon Fellman

PAX Core Elective Courses

ANTH 159a Museums and Public Memory
[ oc ss ]
Explores the social and political organization of public memory, including museums, cultural villages, and memorial sites. Who has the right to determine the content and form of such institutions? Working with local community members, students will develop a collaborative exhibition project. Usually offered every second year.
Ellen Schattschneider

CAST 150b Introduction to Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation
[ ss ]
How can music, theater, dance and visual and other arts contribute to community building, coexistence, and nonviolent social change? In the aftermath of violence, how can artists help communities reconcile? Students explore these questions through interviews, case studies, and projects. Usually offered every year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

ENVS 18b Global Sustainability and Biodiversity Conservation
[ ss ]
Studies the development of international environmental law and policy through a historical lens. Examines how early diplomatic initiatives have--and importantly, have not--shaped the contemporary structure of international environmental relations. Usually offered every second year.
Charles Chester

HSSP 102a Introduction to Global Health
[ ss ]
A primer on major issues in health care in developing nations. Topics include the natural history of disease and levels of prevention; epidemiological transitions; health disparities; and determinants of health including culture, social context, and behavior. Also covers: infectious and chronic disease incidence and prevalence; the role of nutrition, education, reproductive trends, and poverty; demographic transition including aging and urbanization; the structure and financing of health systems; and the globalization of health. Usually offered every year.
Alice Noble

LGLS 125b International Law and Organizations
[ ss ]
Introduction to international law, its nature, sources, and application, for example, its role in the management of international conflicts. Topics may include international agreements, international organizations including the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, states and recognition, nationality and alien rights, territorial and maritime jurisdiction, international claims, and the laws of war and human rights. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

LGLS 130a Conflict Analysis and Intervention
[ oc ss ]
Examines alternatives to litigation, including negotiation and mediation. Through simulations and court observations, students assess their own attitudes about and skills in conflict resolution. Analyzes underlying theories in criminal justice system, divorce, adoption, and international arena. Usually offered every second year.
Melissa Stimell

LGLS 130aj Conflict Analysis and Intervention
[ oc ss ]
This hands-on course invites students to address social problems in immigration policy and practice through public policy reform, community organizing and legal representation. It provides background in the theories, advocacy skills, networks, movements and measures of institutional change that comprise social change practice. Students explore conflict resolution in the context of social justice advocacy, including litigation, community organizing, political advocacy, international institutions, negotiation, peace-making and mediation. Through simulations, court and community group observations, guided representation of immigrants and work with immigration advocacy groups, students assess their own attitudes and skills in conflict resolution, as well as the processes by which conflict resolution institutions and roles help construct the communities of which they are a part. We will analyze underlying theories of conflict and advocacy in domestic immigration and international arenas, as well as the relative efficacy of various modes for social change, such as big case litigation, coordinated ground-level litigation, cultural change approaches, peacemaking, grassroots organizing, direct action, political advocacy (lobbying) and business and other institution-building strategies. Offered as part of the JBS program.
Douglas Smith

PHIL 111a What Is Justice?
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: One course in philosophy or political theory.
This course is a survey of important claims, theories, and arguments about justice in the Western philosophical tradition. Questions we will discuss include: What is justice (and injustice)? What makes someone a just person? What makes for a just society, and a just government in particular? How does justice interact with other things we care about, like equality, liberty, and personal relationships? What does justice require of us in how we treat people from different social groups? We will address these questions through interrogating both classic and contemporary philosophical texts. Usually offered every second year.
Marion Smiley

PHIL 119a Human Rights
[ hum wi ]
Examines international human rights policies and the moral and political issues to which they give rise. Includes civilians' wartime rights, the role of human rights in foreign policy, and the responsibility of individuals and states to alleviate world hunger and famine. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

POL 128a The Politics of Revolution: State Violence and Popular Insurgency in the Third World
[ nw ss ]
Introduction to twentieth-century revolutionary movements in the Third World, focusing on the emergence of peasant-based resistance and revolution in the world beyond the West, and on the role of state violence in provoking popular involvement in protest, rebellion, and insurgency. Usually offered every year.
Ralph Thaxton

SOC 112b Social Class and Social Change
[ ss ]
Presents the role of social class in determining life chances, lifestyles, income, occupation, and power; theories of class, inequality, and globalization; selected social psychological aspects of social class and inequality; and connections of class, race, and gender. Usually offered every second year.
Gordon Fellman

SOC 113b Sociology of Race and Racism
[ deis-us ss ]
Provides an introduction to the study of race and racism and focuses on specific socio-historical issues surrounding racial inequality in the United States. A variety of media to examine topics such as the institutionalization of white privilege, the social construction of "otherness", racial formation processes, and racial segregation are used" Usually offered every third year.
Sarah Mayorga or Derron Wallace

SOC 153a The Sociology of Empowerment
[ djw ss ]
Attendance at first class meeting mandatory. Students interested in the course should contact the instructor.
Combines reading, exercises, journal keeping, and retreats (including a pivotal weekend one on Cape Cod) to address activism and how sociological constructs affect feelings of helplessness, futility, hope, vision, efficacy, hurt, fear, and anger. The course focuses on both self and social activism/social change. Usually offered every year.
Gordon Fellman

WGS 5a Women, Genders, and Sexualities
[ deis-us dl oc ss ]
This interdisciplinary course introduces central concepts and topics in the field of women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Explores the position of women and other genders in diverse settings and the impact of gender as a social, cultural, and intellectual category in the United States and around the globe. Asks how gendered institutions, behaviors, and representations have been configured in the past and function in the present, and also examines the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect with many other vectors of identity and circumstance in forming human affairs. Usually offered every fall.
ChaeRan Freeze, Sarah Lamb, or Harleen Singh

PAX Related Elective Courses

AAAS 60a Economics of Third World Hunger
[ nw ss ]
Employs the tools of social science, particularly economics, to study causes and potential solutions to problems in production, trade, and consumption of food in the underdeveloped world. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 80a Economy and Society in Africa
[ nw ss wi ]
Perspectives on the interaction of economic and other variables in African societies. Topics include the ethical and economic bases of distributive justice; models of social theory, efficiency, and equality in law; the role of economic variables in the theory of history; and world systems analysis. Usually offered every third year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 123a Third World Ideologies
[ nw ss wi ]
Analyzes ideological concepts developed by seminal Third World political thinkers and their application to modern political analysis. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 126b Political Economy of the Third World
[ nw ss wi ]
Development of capitalism and different roles and functions assigned to all "Third Worlds," in the periphery as well as the center. Special attention will be paid to African and African American peripheries. Usually offered every year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AMST 45b Violence (and Nonviolence) in American Culture
[ ss ]
Studies the use of terror and violence by citizens and governments in the domestic history of the United States. What are the occasions and causes of violence? How is it imagined, portrayed, and explained in literature? Is there anything peculiarly American about violence in America--nonviolence and pacifism? Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ANTH 129b Global, Transnational and Diasporic Communities
[ ss ]
Examines the social and cultural dimensions of diasporas and homelands from an anthropological perspective. It starts by critically engaging with more fundamental concepts such as state, identity, and movement. It then proceeds to debate the various contributions that anthropologists have presented to the understanding of human life in transnational and diasporic contexts. Topics to be discussed include homeland, place, migration, religion, global sexual cultures, kinship, and technology—all within a global perspective. Usually offered every second year.
Jonathan Anjaria or Sarah Lamb

ANTH 136a Archaeology of Power: Authority, Prestige, and Inequality in the Past
[ nw ss ]
Anthropological and archaeological research and theory provide a unique, long-term perspective on the development of inequality and rise of hierarchical societies, including the earliest ancient states such as the Moche, Maya, China, Sumerians, Egyptians, and others through 5000 years of human history. A comparative, multidisciplinary seminar examining the dynamics of authority, prestige, and power in the past, and the implications for understanding the present. Usually offered every second year.
Charles Golden

ANTH 156a Power and Violence: The Anthropology of Political Systems
[ deis-us dl nw ss ]
Political orders are established and maintained by varying combinations of overt violence and the more subtle workings of ideas. The course examines the relationship of coercion and consensus, and forms of resistance, in historical and contemporary settings. Usually offered every second year.
Elizabeth Ferry

BIOL 17b Conservation Biology
[ sn ]
Considers the current worldwide loss of biological diversity, causes of this loss, and methods for protecting and conserving biodiversity. Explores biological and social aspects of the problems and their solutions. Usually offered every year.
Colleen Hitchcock

ECON 57a Environmental Economics
[ ss ]
Prerequisite: ECON 2a or 10a.
Investigates the theoretical and policy problems posed by the use of renewable and nonrenewable resources. Theoretical topics include the optimal pricing of resources, the optimal use of standards and taxes to correct pollution problems under uncertainty, and the measurement of costs and benefits. Usually offered every year.
Linda Bui and James Ji

ECON 175a Introduction to the Economics of Development
[ ss ]
Prerequisite: ECON 2a or 10a or permission of the instructor. Does not count toward the upper-level elective requirement for the major in economics.
An introduction to various models of economic growth and development and evaluation of these perspectives from the experience of developing and industrial countries. Usually offered every second year.
Nidhiya Menon

ED 158b Looking with the Learner: Practice and Inquiry
Does not satisfy a school distribution requirement--for education studies core course credit only. Lab fee: $40.
Links theory to practice in learning through the visual arts through three types of experiences: 1) looking at art; 2) museum-based interactions with students from Stanley Elementary School in Waltham; and 3) documenting our experiences as lookers, learners, and teachers. What can we learn about art, artists, ourselves, and young learners through the processes of looking at art? How can we best support students in their own encounters with art and learning? How can museums serve as a model for education in various settings? Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 17a Alternative and Underground Journalism
[ hum ]
A critical history of twentieth-century American journalism. Topics include the nature of journalistic objectivity, the style of underground and alternative periodicals, and the impact of new technologies on independent media. Usually offered every third year.
Caren Irr

ENG 52a Refugee Stories, Refugee Lives
[ hum nw ]
Examines the functions of storytelling in the refugee crisis. Its main objective is to further students' understanding of the political dimensions of storytelling. The course explores how reworking of reality enable people to question State and social structures. Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 172b African Literature and Human Rights
[ hum nw ]
Human rights have been central to thinking about Africa. What do we mean when we speak of human rights? Are we asserting a natural and universal equality among all people, regardless of race, class, gender, or geography? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

LGLS 124b Comparative Law and Development
[ nw ss ]
Surveys legal systems across the world with special application to countries in the process of political, social, or economic transition. Examines constitutional and rule-of-law principles in the context of developing global networks. Usually offered every second year.
Daniel Breen

NEJS 37a The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry
[ hum ]
Open to all students. May not be taken for credit by students who took NEJS 137a in prior years.
Why and how did European Jews become victims of genocide? A systematic examination of the planning and implementation of Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” and the Jewish and general responses to it. Usually offered every year.
Laura Jockusch

NEJS 189a The Arab-Israeli Conflict
[ hum ss ]
Consideration of Arab-Jewish relations, attitudes, and interactions from 1880 to the present. Emphasis on social factors and intellectual currents and their impact on politics. Examines the conflict within its international setting. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

PHIL 126a What Does it Mean to be a Global Citizen?
[ hum wi ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took PHIL 20a in prior years.
Focuses on the relation of the individual to the state and, in particular, on the theory and practice of nonviolent resistance, its aims, methods, achievements, and legitimacy. Examines the nature of obligation and the role of civil disobedience in a democratic society. Explores the conflict between authority and autonomy and the grounds for giving one's allegiance to any state at all. Examples include opposition to the nuclear arms race, and disobedience in China and Northern Ireland and at abortion clinics. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

POL 15a Introduction to International Relations
[ ss ]
Open to first-year students.
General introduction to international politics, emphasizing the essential characteristics of the international system as a basis for understanding the foreign policy of individual countries. Analysis of causes of war, conditions of peace, patterns of influence, the nature of the world's political economy, global environmental issues, human rights, and prospects for international organizations. Open to first-year students. Usually offered every semester.
Kerry Chase

POL 144a Latin American Politics
[ djw nw ss wi ]
Examines the development and deepening of democracy in Latin America, focusing on the role of political institutions, economic development, the military, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Usually offered every year.
Alejandro Trelles

SAS 130a Film and Fiction of Crisis
[ hum nw ]
Examines novels and films as a response to some pivotal crisis in South Asia: Independence and Partition, Communal Riots, Insurgency and Terrorism. We will read and analyze texts from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka in an effort to examine how these moments of crisis have affected literary and cinematic form while also paying close attention to how they contest or support the narrative of the unified nation. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Singh

SOC 154b Anger and Hate
[ ss ]
Addresses both "personal anger" and "social anger." The course will address meanings of anger, anthropological and sociological considerations, and the topics of women and anger, race and anger, masculinity and anger, class and anger, and media and anger. We will also investigate the role of anger in social change movements. Special one-timer offering, spring 2020.
Gordon Fellman

University Bulletin (2021-2022)