Courses

Arts of War is an introduction to military history and philosophy, and it encourages students to think critically about the topic of war. The insights from this class apply to the fields of politics, leadership studies, journalism, history, sociology, psychology, art, literature, and game design. The class approaches the topic of war from a variety of perspectives, ranging from military theory and history to representations of war in fiction, descriptions of war experiences in personal memoires, and dynamic models of conflict. Arts of War embraces the turn in military history toward an understanding of war as an expression of time and place, which is shaped by culture as much it shapes culture in return. 

This class will allow first-year students of IU to become familiar with many incarnations of war through relevant texts from the fifth century BCE to the present. The class includes excerpts of key treatises on war, such as Sun Tzu’s Art of War; Machiavelli’s The Prince; von Clausewitz’s On War. These sources are not just relevant within the academic context, but also have immense practical applicability. Many of the readings on our list are used in the training of today’s military officers. Sun Tzu’s and Machiavelli’s texts are at the core of much modern thinking about business and civilian leadership. 

Moreover, Arts of War employs tabletop wargames to explore the dynamics of military conflict from a closer and interactive perspective. The wargames used in class are the same ones that armies and governments employ to train officers and tackle real-life problems. As the U.S. Army Center for Army Lessons Learned wrote: «Wargames allow leaders to gain confidence in decision making through repetition and learning, improve visualization and understanding of military operations; and build teams and demonstrate individual personality traits and thought processes. Wargames allow experimentation in “safe-to-fail” environments and multiple opportunities to practice analysis and decision making ... Compared to most other training events, wargames require minimal overhead and resources» (How to Master Wargaming: Commander and Staff, p. 19). By playing wargames, students will benefit from the best learning tools known to the professionals in the field.

This course is eligible for honors credit through Hutton Honors College. 

Catalog Information: COLL-S 103  FRESHMAN SEMINAR IN A&H

Instructor:

Marco Arnaudo

Email:

marnaudo@indiana.edu

Department:

French & Italian

Marco Arnaudo is a Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington. He teaches for the Department of French and Italian, the Honors College, and IFS. His classes cover topics as diverse as European literature, comic books, game design, mystery fiction, science fiction, and military history and theory. He is the author of 7 books, 50+ academic articles, and 4 professionally published games. He is also a video blogger, with over 2,000 video reviews to his credit and a following of 25,000+ subscribers on his YouTube channel.

GenEd Information: Approved for the Arts & Humanities requirement of the IU Bloomington General Education program.