Welcome

IR Theory: A Critical Introduction 5th Edition website features a complete set of lectures for every major theory and film covered in the textbook, additional workshop and seminar exercises, PowerPoint slides to accompany each lecture and seminar/workshop, delivery plans for using these materials, and an extensive bank of multiple-choice, short-answer and essay questions and answers for every chapter. Where possible, links to visual materials have been noted in these teaching materials.

This new edition of IR Theory: A Critical Introduction brings this textbook up to date with a new chapter focused on global LGBT theory and queer theory, Hillary Clinton’s policy myth that ‘gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights’, and the film Love is Strange.

In some ways, this edition is like all the previous editions of this book. It focuses on IR myths, it situates these myths in the historical times from which they emerge, and it uses popular film to illustrate and deconstruct these myths. But in other ways, this edition marks a departure from past editions because of its openness to other disciplines (in this case, Anthropology) to instruct us about international events. This underscores an important point for me – that it makes no difference whether the most challenging new ideas and new myths about the conduct of international politics and about International Relations theory are generated within the discipline of IR or outside of it. Regardless of where IR myths come from, our students need to be informed about them, they need to understand them, and they need to be instructed in how to think critically about them.