This course is organized around a series of questions: What is global politics? What is the state? The International System? Colonialism? Sovereignty? Apartheid? and the Anthropocene? The point is not to arrive at definitive answers, nor to survey the full range of possible answers. The point is instead to recognize that key concepts deployed in the study of global politics are not straight forward in their meaning. Reading across some enduring and more recent debates in global politics, students will be encouraged to pause before using these and other terms in casual, descriptive or explanatory ways and to understand the concepts as political in themselves. How then to proceed as students of global politics, given that what we want to study is part of what we also want to hold in contention? An additional aim of this course is to expose students to approaches to global inquiry that grapple with this conundrum