POL SCI 139
Special Studies in International Relations
Description: Lecture, three or four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisites: two courses in Field II, or course 20 and one course in Field II. Designed for juniors/seniors. Intensive examination of one or more special problems appropriate to international relations. Sections offered on regular basis, with topics announced in preceding term. May be repeated for credit with topic change. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
3 of 5
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2025 - The professor is very knowledgeable and engaging during lecture. Her slides have lots of info, but it does not get posted. Writing down every word can get difficult at times, but if you are attentive to the actual lecture it is easy to understand. The midterm and final are in-class essays which you will get two prompt choices for and have time to prepare them. On the day of, she will pick one, so you need to have both ready. To do good on these, you should keep up with the reading, since you need to cite the authors as evidence. She does not specify how many authors you need to have cited, but the more, the better. You should also integrate real-world examples from her lectures to support the theories of the authors. I don’t believe she gives perfect scores on the exams, but it balances out with the quizzes. There are quizzes after each lecture based on the readings which make up the majority of your grade. These are easy points, so make sure you don’t miss any. I wish she was more clear about her grading because I felt that it was inconsistent on the exams. She will not round at all, keep that in mind. I would recommend joining her office hours prepared with some ideas on what to discuss for the exam so she can guide you, as she can be a bit harsh at times. The class is interesting, especially if you like IR already.
Fall 2025 - The professor is very knowledgeable and engaging during lecture. Her slides have lots of info, but it does not get posted. Writing down every word can get difficult at times, but if you are attentive to the actual lecture it is easy to understand. The midterm and final are in-class essays which you will get two prompt choices for and have time to prepare them. On the day of, she will pick one, so you need to have both ready. To do good on these, you should keep up with the reading, since you need to cite the authors as evidence. She does not specify how many authors you need to have cited, but the more, the better. You should also integrate real-world examples from her lectures to support the theories of the authors. I don’t believe she gives perfect scores on the exams, but it balances out with the quizzes. There are quizzes after each lecture based on the readings which make up the majority of your grade. These are easy points, so make sure you don’t miss any. I wish she was more clear about her grading because I felt that it was inconsistent on the exams. She will not round at all, keep that in mind. I would recommend joining her office hours prepared with some ideas on what to discuss for the exam so she can guide you, as she can be a bit harsh at times. The class is interesting, especially if you like IR already.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2016 - Professor Levin sets his grades based off: midterm 38%, final 60%, and course evaluation 2%. He is very dry and relies fully on powerpoint. His test are focused mainly on what is presented during his lectures, but he does ask a few questions on the readings. In his test be sure to be thorough and give more than what he asks for, as I only answered what he asked and received a D. Honestly I should've studied more, but I cannot stress the importance of being extremely thorough on the tests. Good luck and remember to study for everything as his final is cumulative.
Winter 2016 - Professor Levin sets his grades based off: midterm 38%, final 60%, and course evaluation 2%. He is very dry and relies fully on powerpoint. His test are focused mainly on what is presented during his lectures, but he does ask a few questions on the readings. In his test be sure to be thorough and give more than what he asks for, as I only answered what he asked and received a D. Honestly I should've studied more, but I cannot stress the importance of being extremely thorough on the tests. Good luck and remember to study for everything as his final is cumulative.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2025 - I think Peter’s really cares about her students, and I often found her engaging and funny. She is incredibly educated on the issue of migration and it shows through in her lectures. The content is genuinley engaging and I’m happy I took the class. That being said, the amount of content we were expected to know and the amount of assigned readings was quite a lot. You absolutely will fall behind if you’re not sticking to the reading schedule and attending every lecture and studying (which is what happened to me- I had to evacuate cause of the palisades fires and fell behind the start of class). That being said, this class isn’t impossible and Peter’s nor her TA’s want to see you fail. It will just take a lot of discipline and interest in the class topic in order to succeed because you will be consuming so much information weekly and you have to be prepared for that. My one issue I had with the class, and where I saw a lot of people struggle was the lack of guidance in how to study for our quizzes. In this class our grades were based off a series of papers, quizzes, and one final collaborative paper. Everyone including myself did excellent on the papers because we had such thorough guidance and expectations on what was expected of us (and that’s what ultimately saved my grade). As for the quizzes, most people struggled because nobody knew how to study for them. One quiz would be test based, another would be lecture based, and another would be based on very specific details of one reading. There was no way to strategically study because the focus of each quiz was wildly different, and with the range of content we were expected to consume over several weeks it was impossible to memorize and prepare to do well on a quiz that felt like a series of trivia questions. In all, if you have to, or want to take this class do so when you feel like you can take on the challenge and/or don’t need to take a very heavy course load for the quarter. It’s a genuinely intriguing class and I enjoyed Peter’s as a person, there was just so much content to engage with and memorize in order to do well with the class for better and worse. I would suggest taking this class if you’re ready.
Winter 2025 - I think Peter’s really cares about her students, and I often found her engaging and funny. She is incredibly educated on the issue of migration and it shows through in her lectures. The content is genuinley engaging and I’m happy I took the class. That being said, the amount of content we were expected to know and the amount of assigned readings was quite a lot. You absolutely will fall behind if you’re not sticking to the reading schedule and attending every lecture and studying (which is what happened to me- I had to evacuate cause of the palisades fires and fell behind the start of class). That being said, this class isn’t impossible and Peter’s nor her TA’s want to see you fail. It will just take a lot of discipline and interest in the class topic in order to succeed because you will be consuming so much information weekly and you have to be prepared for that. My one issue I had with the class, and where I saw a lot of people struggle was the lack of guidance in how to study for our quizzes. In this class our grades were based off a series of papers, quizzes, and one final collaborative paper. Everyone including myself did excellent on the papers because we had such thorough guidance and expectations on what was expected of us (and that’s what ultimately saved my grade). As for the quizzes, most people struggled because nobody knew how to study for them. One quiz would be test based, another would be lecture based, and another would be based on very specific details of one reading. There was no way to strategically study because the focus of each quiz was wildly different, and with the range of content we were expected to consume over several weeks it was impossible to memorize and prepare to do well on a quiz that felt like a series of trivia questions. In all, if you have to, or want to take this class do so when you feel like you can take on the challenge and/or don’t need to take a very heavy course load for the quarter. It’s a genuinely intriguing class and I enjoyed Peter’s as a person, there was just so much content to engage with and memorize in order to do well with the class for better and worse. I would suggest taking this class if you’re ready.
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3 of 5
