PAX 201 THEMATIC INQUIRY

This course considers an interdisciplinary network of questions: When, if ever, is recourse to state violence justified? Are there moral and legal limits to what combatants have a right to do in the conduct of war? Is pacifism a defensible ideal? How have issues around peace and conflict been told through the visual arts, literature, dance, music, religious texts, and other forms of performance and narration? Does our entertainment culture glorify war? How have social constructions like race, gender, religion, nationality, and ethnicity bound people together and torn them apart? How are soldiers trained to kill, and what does it take to return to productive civilian life after having participated in lethal violence? Are human societies becoming more or less violent? How can science and technology be used for peaceful ends, rather than for military use? The aim is to help students develop their own animating question about peace and conflict: a question that will guide them throughout the Peace and Conflict Pathway.