TRN350H1
TRN350H1: Scarcity, Sustainability, and the Future of International Relations
Course Description
International relations are changing, and changing quickly. Major challenges in global affairs, including the interrelated problems of climate change, resource scarcity, great power competition, and changes in mass politics, will shape our future in uncertain and possibly dangerous ways. This course evaluates the effect of these interconnected issues on our world today, and their implications for the future. Through a series of case studies, students will be encouraged to identify future international challenges and work to develop sustainable and innovative solutions to the problems that will confront our world in the next decades and beyond. To do so, students learn to critique and draft policy proposals related to contemporary pressing issues. Students also complete a comprehensive analytical essay covering the material learned in the course.
2026 – 2027 Course Instructor Felix Cowan
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Felix Cowan is a historian of modern Europe specializing in the history of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, with research interests in political culture, urban history, and everyday life. His first book, The Kopeck Press: Popular Journalism in Revolutionary Russia, 1908-1918, was published by University of Toronto Press in 2025. This monograph uses tabloid newspapers to explore an emerging democratic political culture in the early twentieth century Russian Empire. Dr. Cowan’s other published work explores themes of civil society, gender identity, and lower-class politics and culture, and he is in the early stages of a new project on the history of democratic ideas, experiments, and reforms in Russia. In addition to Russian, Soviet, and European history, Dr. Cowan also teaches the global Cold War and the complex historical relationship between empire and nation.
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