International Relations at the Movies: Teaching and Learning about International Politics through Film
International Relations at the Movies: Teaching and Learning about Intenational Politics through Film

Summary/Abstract: For mainstream Political Science, 'popular culture' is still not considered worthy of serious investigation. Similarly, the idea of using movies as a pedagogical tool has remained at the margins. Nevertheless, film can be a valuable means of teaching university students about politics and intenational politics in particular. This paper identifies four distinct ways of using movies as a teaching tool: the first approach uses film to portray historical events such as the Cold War, and the second utilizes film to debate specific issues in international politics such as terrorism or genocide. The third approach examines movies as cultural narratives - e.g. anti-Americanism in Turkey -, while the fourth uses film to explain and criticize IR theories (here, for example, Post-Modernism is discussed with the help of the movie Pulp Fiction). The article examines the strengths and weaknesses of using film in the IR classroom in general and illustrates each of the four approaches by using examples from movies.

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