INTL 235 - Barack Obama on the Global Stage

Barack Hussein Obama II, a Hawaii-born, Indonesia-raised son of a white American anthropologist and a visiting Kenyan economist, was the world’s most powerful human from 2008 to 2016. The literature on Obama is vast; we will not attempt a full survey. Instead, this course focuses on twenty major Obama speeches given in iconic settings: Accra, Ankara, Berlin, Buchenwald, Cairo, Cape Town, Hanoi, Havana, Hiroshima, Jakarta, at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, and in ten other world locations, attending to country-specific, regional, and global dynamics; stagecraft, reception, race, gender, and other issues. We will avoid hagiography. Alternate years. (4 Credits)