Using Literary Fiction and Narrative Nonfiction to Teach International Relations and Migration
By Sefa Secen, University of South Florida
IR courses run on datasets, models, and structural frameworks. Those tools matter, but they leave out the people world politics is actually about. This article argues that literary fiction and narrative nonfiction belong on the IR syllabus as real evidence, not just enrichment. Drawing on two courses on refugees and migration, it connects the approach to the aesthetic turn, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and Nussbaum’s work on the literary imagination. It gives instructors a four–stage model for working these texts into a semester, a selection table organized by displacement context and theory, and an honest look at teaching difficult material.
The Journal of Political Science Education is an intellectually rigorous, path-breaking, agenda-setting journal that publishes the highest quality scholarship on teaching and pedagogical issues in political science. The journal aims to represent the full range of questions, issues and approaches regarding political science education, including teaching-related issues, methods and techniques, learning/teaching activities and devices, educational assessment in political science, graduate education, and curriculum development.
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