SO4B8      Half Unit
Internationalism and Solidarity

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Given the frequent overlap, in theory and practice, between visions of internationalism and cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and the remarkable internal variation—to the extent that two different and coherent bodies of thought can be said to exist in the first place—within internationalism and cosmopolitanism on the other, how should we think about the divergences and convergences between these two visions? When different versions of internationalism and cosmopolitanism as expounded and practiced by various theological traditions are added to the matrix along with their feminist, anarchist, regionalist, Third-Worldist, nationalist and militarist articulations, the nature of these phenomena proves too complicated to grasp in a single breath. This course aims to examine this problem by addressing the complications that arise in attempts to define, critique, and practice various strands of internationalism and cosmopolitanism. Cases considered will include communist internationalism, feminist internationalism, anarchist internationalism, Third-Worldism, human rights and liberal internationalism, and Black internationalism.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course is usually delivered through seminars. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week in WT.

Abstract (700 words)

The formative assessment will consist of an abstract (700 words) and bibliography of the summative essay, to be submitted in week 8 of WT.

This is an indicative list. Titles may vary year to year.

• Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto;
• Lenin, Right of Nations to Self-Determination;
• Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders;
• Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination;
• Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917-1939;
• Mahler, From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity.

Course participation (10%)

Research paper (90%, 5000 words) in May

Course participation is assessed throughout the Winter Term.

Attendance at all seminars and submission of all set coursework is required.