Back to the future: teaching about the end of the world

Abstract

The paper examines the challenges of teaching about the impact of nuclear weapons on international relations to students who were born after the Cold War and suggests a variety of pedagogical approaches for helping them understand this impact including readings, media, and simulations. We first discuss the value of a multi-methods approach to teaching about nuclear weapons and then discuss resources for these different approaches. For readings, we identify key writing framed as debates that have worked with undergraduates like Waltz and Sagan as well as key articles and literature reviews and historical literature about the actual use of nuclear weapons during World War II. We then discuss different multimedia such as movies and music. Finally, we discuss in class simulations with a focus on Nuclear Diplomacy, providing some examples of student reaction to playing these simulations.