https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/INTR5789?type=COREIn an era marked by global crises - climate change, structural inequality, war, genocide, the rise of authoritarianism - hope is not found in imagining a distant future. As Rebecca Solnit powerfully argues, rather than trying to hide from uncertainty, hope can only arise from embracing the unknown as a practice grounded in the present. Hope is neither naïve optimism, nor escapism; it is an intentional, embodied, ethical and political relation - a way of grappling with both the brokenness of the world and attuning to the inherent potential for transformation.This course explores hopeful horizons in world politics - possibilities of agency, solidarity, community, resilience, resistance, healing and creativity - that work towards more democratic, sustainable and caring futures. We will consider 'hope' as a concept, an affective state, a way of knowing and producing knowledge under conditions of radical uncertainty, and a political and personal relation that can foster and facilitate social change. At the intersections of the politics of emotions and the politics of knowledge we will engage modes of storytelling, ways of sense-making, negotiations and translations within IR scholarship and beyond.Drawing on interdisciplinary resources, creative research methods and critical genres - such as postcolonialism and decolonial praxis, non-Western IR, narrative approaches, post-humanism, feminism, visual politics, indigenous wisdom, the political sociology of IR as a discipline - we will zoom in on where and how empowering, life-affirming knowledge practices and forms of action may arise both in scholarship and the everyday realities of world politics. Throughout this course, we will engage with a series of critical questions, including:· What is political about emotions and affect, and how do they shape our narratives and with that, the horizons of the possible?· What are the micro-dynamics of hope as an affective state, and in what ways do they diverge from the political lives of other emotions such as anger, desire, or despair?· Drawing on bell hooks, how might we - whether as students, scholars, practitioners, or engaged citizens - invite theory to 'heal,' contest, and transform what is oppressive or obsolete in our meaning making practices? How can theory inform and inspire more integrative, sustainable and caring modes of knowing, being and acting?· What alternative imaginaries, narratives, stories and practices challenge conventional disciplinary understandings of knowledge, statehood, power politics, and the presumed inevitability of violence and suffering in world politics? What more caring presents and possible futures already exist, often quietly, amid the dominant spectacles of world politics?