Global and Comparative Perspectives on Public Diplomacy

SIS 628.004

Professor Craig Hayden

Public diplomacy is generally defined as understanding, engaging, informing, and influencing foreign publics. This course provides an understanding of the history and dynamics of U.S. public diplomacy; knowledge of strategies and techniques for advocating policy and influencing opinion and behavior of international audiences in a Web 2.0 age; skills to communicate, especially in writing; an understanding of how to analyze key data, including opinion polls and audience surveys; and an ability to engage with the key moral, political, and practical dimensions of public diplomacy. Meets with SIS-419 003.

Syllabus

SIS 640

International communication as a field of inquiry and research: perspectives, theories, and assumptions underlying communication between nations and peoples; international flow of information and its implications in relations among nations and cultures. Usually offered every term.

Syllabus

SIS 419.064

Professor Robert Kelley

This class introduces students at the undergraduate level to public diplomacy, a once-underappreciated but now increasingly vital form of action in world politics. Located at the intersection of politics and communications, public diplomacy has been understood mainly as a tool of statecraft that governments use to inform, influence, and engage with publics abroad in support of policy objectives. However, public diplomacy as a practice has evolved most recently in parallel with today’s robust and highly-complex international communications environment. No longer do governments possess a monopoly on information, and by extension the powers of influence and engagement are spreading rapidly into the public domain. The principal objectives of this course are 1) to expose students to the range of practices incorporated in past and present public diplomacy; 2) to connect students with the leading debates in the study of public diplomacy; and 3) to experiment with tools and build public diplomacy skills by assigning students hands-on projects. Over the course of a semester students shall learn to think strategically about engaging publics and governments for the purpose of influencing politics at and above the state level.

Syllabus

Public Diplomacy and International Communications

SIS 628.004

Professor Amb. Anthony Quainton

Public diplomacy seeks to promote the national interest and the national security of the United States through understanding, informing, and influencing foreign publics and broadening dialogue between American citizens and institutions and their counterparts abroad. This course is designed to provide students an in-depth understanding of public diplomacy as an instrument of foreign policy. It will focus on the history of U.S public diplomacy since the Second World War and will explore the motivations, stakeholders and constraints which impact the use of public diplomacy by the American and other governments. By the end of the course students (1) should have a thorough knowledge of the enduring issues in public diplomacy as they have played out over time; (2) an understanding of the various public diplomacy tools that can be used to promote national interests and values; and (3) a capacity to relate foreign policy issues to public diplomacy strategies in various areas of the world. The course is designed to enhance students’ writing, speaking and critical analysis skills that are essential in a professional career.

Syllabus