Luca Trenta – Sessions Teaching Block 2, 2019 – 20

PO-3316 – Shadow Wars: US Presidents and covert action from the Cold War to Obama

Number of Students: 35

Day, Time and Location: Lectures: Mondays, 13:00 – 14:00 Faraday E. Seminars: Wednesdays, 09:00 – 10:00 Keir Hardie 206 and (currently) Thursdays 13:00 – 14:00 Keir Hardie 330.

This module covers the history of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Each week deals with a President and their use of the CIA. Each week consists of a lecture and a seminar.
Luca does the lectures (traditional in style) and the first two seminars. The rest of the seminars are led and managed by the students.

The students are put into teams, then each week a team is asked to prepare a presentation and devise seminar activities on a topic related to (but not identical) the lecture topic e.g. looking at a covert operation that they haven’t discussed in much detail in the lecture, or exploring a particular angle of the Presidency. Activities might be debates on primary sources, quizzes, role plays etc. They do about 40 minutes worth and leave Luca 10 – 15 minutes to summarise and establish a link to the next week.

The lecture is an hour and the seminar is an hour. In an ideal world you’d go to both so you had the background before the seminar. However, the world is far from ideal, so if you can only do one … maybe the seminar ?

(There are currently 2 seminars a week. This may change to 1 depending on numbers and attendance)

Teaching methods used:

  • Active Learning
  • Discussion
  • Group Work
  • Interactive
  • Lecture
  • Seminar

Sessions (click on session date to book):

Topic Lecture Seminar
Topic3: Eisenhower: Guatemala and Iran 10th February 2020 12th February 2020

13th February 2020
Topic 4: Kennedy: the Castro obsession 17th February 2020 19th February 2020

20th February 2020
Topic 6: Make the economy scream: Nixon and Allende’s Chile 2nd March 2020 4th March 2020

5th March 2020
Topic 7: The season of inquiry: Ford, the Church Committee and assassination 9th March 2020 11th March 2020

12th March 2020
Topic 8: Reagan 1: the CIA, Afghanistan and the mujahedeen 16th March 2020 18th March 2020

19th March 2020

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