Courses:

The assignments constitute a substantial part of a student's final grade. Descriptions of the course assignments are presented below.

Three short essays of no more than 1,000 words will be assigned. The essays should critically examine a hypothesis, theory, question, concept or controversy contained in the readings for each week. The essay may address only a subset of the readings, but under no circumstances should the essay summarize assigned texts. A copy of the essay must be e-mailed to Professor Fravel as an attachment (.doc or .pdf) by 5 pm on the day preceding each meeting.

Either a take-home exercise or a research design paper of no more than 3,000 words in length is due at the end of the term. The question for the take-home will be distributed during Lec #12 and will be designed to assess critically the material from the seminar. The research design paper should:

1. Specify clear hypothesis or theoretical argument on an important question drawn from the readings, class discussion or your own interests,
2. Specify relevant alternative hypotheses / argument,
3. Describe the type of evidence that you would need to test the hypothesis, and
4. Outline the implications for IR theory based on a successful or unsuccessful test of the hypothesis.

Research memos of no more than 250 words will also be assigned. Based loosely on the topic or issues raised in discussion each week, these memos should outline a hypothesis, state its importance and describe how it might be tested. The memo should be emailed to Professor Fravel within 24 hours after each meeting with the subject heading "17.418 memo."