Teaching and Research Interests

My primary field is International Relations. My research has followed two more specialized interests: 1) economics and national security; 2) the politics of money. My first book, Currency and Coercion: The Political Economy of International Monetary Power (Princeton University Press, 1995) integrated these two interests with an exploration of how states can and have manipulated international monetary relations to advance security-related goals. My second book, Appeasing Bankers: Financial Caution on the Road to War (Princeton University Press, 2007), considers how financial interests (such as banks) and international financial markets can shape and constrain states' grand strategies and influence decisions about war and peace. Appeasing Bankers won the 2009 best book award from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

I am the co-editor (with Eric Helleiner) of the multi-disciplinary book series, “Cornell Studies in Money.” Previously I served as director the International Political Economy program at the Einaudi Center for International Studies. A series of workshops run by the IPE program on the politics of money led to my edited volume, Money Orders: Ambiguous Economics, Ubiquitous Politics (Cornell University Press, 2003); the IPE program also supported the conferences that led to my co-edited volume The Future of the Dollar (Cornell, forthcoming 2009). I also have chaired the Economics and National Security seminar run by the Olin Institute of Strategic Studies at Harvard. A multi-year project at the Olin ENS program led to my second edited volume, Globalization and National Security (Routledge, 2006).

I am currently director of Cornell University's Peace Studies Program, and I am pursuing research projects involving classical realism, the international politics of the financial crisis, energy security, and politics and film.

At the graduate level, I teach courses in IR, IPE, Political Economy, and Economics and National Security. At the undergraduate level I teach a wide variety of courses in IR (including, in rotation, Introduction to International Relations) and political economy. I also teach courses on politics and film (in the arts college and also most summers at Cornell’s Adult University). My scholarship in this area focuses on American films of the 1960s and 1970s.

Curriculum Vitae

Course Syllabi:

Gov 1817: Introduction to International Relations
Govt 480: The Politics of the "Seventies" Film
Gov 606: Field Seminar in International Relations
Govt 688: Political Economy and National Security
Govt 703: Political Economy