PLIR 3060

This is a great class. The content is really interesting, the professor is engaging, and the class is pretty easy. The class is basically about how and why countries go to war. It is heavily theory-based with historical examples. There is a lot of reading required, but you can easily get by only doing 1/2 of the reading. Ignore the comments saying that he has a hard to follow teaching style; while this is true, most of his in-class teaching is not especially important. I had a friend who did none of the reading and only attended half the lectures and still got an A in the course. If you're at all interested in politics or international affairs, I would take this class. I would also recommend this class for those interested in current world events and ongoing conflicts, since a large part of the course focuses on current day events.

Dale is an interesting guy, I found him a little quirky, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable. However, I did not enjoy his teaching methods in this course, it was kind of hard to follow along because he moves quick, no slides (which is fine but it made studying a little more difficult), and he is all over the place. This course has attendance/participation grade, but he doesn't do roll call and he sometimes will never know your name, so how does he know if you attend? Additionally, he does this "quick-read" method of grading, which is not effective because he misses so many of your points. You may do everything "right" in his strict way of how he wants you to do things, but it is not enough sometimes.

I loved this class. I've never been the perfect student, but I got an A in this class when most people found it pretty difficult. I think it's because of my approach to the class and the fact that I just naturally love IR classes. This is one of those classes where you can honestly just chill in, go to a lecture, skim the readings, and do fine, but in the week or two leading up to the midterm essay and final exam, just lock in. I used the writing center a good bit on my midterm essay, which probably helped me get a higher grade. That being said, if you don't naturally enjoy IR topics, I would think very hard about taking this class because if you're already forcing yourself to come to lecture, you feel like you have to go. Not because you enjoy it, but because it'll be tough to follow Copeland's style of writing all of his thoughts down on big and intimidating diagrams on the chalkboard.

It's one of my favorite classes, and I feel like I gained much knowledge I'll take into my professional life.

I absolutely loved this class, but I would only recommend to people that are at least somewhat passionate about international relations. Dale Copeland has been my favorite professor so far at UVA, so much so that I'm taking his smaller seminar in Spring 2024. He is rather eclectic but has so much knowledge and passion for the topics at hand, and is a prominent theorist in the field. He is funny and office hours with him are very rewarding. Note that he does NOT allow computers in class and wants you to print out all the readings (which you don't actually have to do). The readings are a lot, but frankly unless your TA does reading quizzes (which mine didn't), you don't have to do all of them. There is some content in class that isn't fleshed out unless you do the reading, so I would highly recommend doing them, but also that's because I think the material is super interesting. 10/10 prof but not for the faint of heart (just a midterm and a final).

This course is a great overview of the theoretical underpinnings of the use of force in international relations. Throughout the course, Copeland applies these theories to historical and contemporary examples, particularly towards the end of the course. This course is certainly not easy, but an A is very attainable if you are able to stay on top of the pretty hefty reading load and do well on the midterm and final. Don't hesitate to go to office hours with Copeland or your TA for help with the midterm—this improved my grade significantly. Copeland has a pretty rambling style of lecturing, and he doesn't use slides. If you can stay focused, it's honestly kind of a refreshing change from professors who just read off of their slides for 50 minutes. Another note: he doesn't let you use laptops to take notes in lecture and asks that you print out all of the readings from Canvas and annotate them. In all honesty, I just ignored that second requirement—Copeland was never the wiser and our TA didn't care. Overall, very rigorous but a great stepping stone into higher-level IR courses. #tCFFall23

Avoid this class. Copeland's lectures are completely scattered and offer almost no help on the midterm or final. The class relies heavily on the readings, and there are an absurd amount compared to the average politics course. Not super hard to do well on the essays by skimming the readings, but overall a completely disjointed and boring class.

Lectures were super engaging and easy to follow, the material is admittedly quite difficult and you MUST do the readings in order to follow along in lecture + pull off higher than a C on the exams (which are all essays). However, the content is very interesting and I highly recommend to anyone interested in world affairs + global politics. Was a bit peeved that we had to purchase his own book, but much of the second half of the course comes from it and it is interesting. Only criticism is that nothing is posted so attendance is necessary.

WOW. This class is still as difficult as ever. Fortunately, I have a suspicion that this will remain one of my favorite classes I've taken at UVA, long after I've graduated. As my first Politics class, the amount of readings this class required completely slammed me, however, I've never been more interested in the course-content of a class. Prof. Copeland was just an enigma to watch. He knows his stuff so well and can explain it so articulately, that you're never quite able to look away during lectures. This is not a class where you can skip lectures, as main arguments are elucidated during those, something very important for sifting out which aspects of your super long readings are more necessary than others. The Midterm paper and prepping for the Final will consume your every thought for the week leading up to it, but thankfully, that only happens twice a semester. I can't emphasize enough how much unduly stress this course will put you through, but if you're truly interested in war theory, it's definitely a "hard work pays off" type of class instead. I would recommend going into the class with a fairly concrete sense of geopolitics and an already natural effort of paying attention to current affairs, because having background knowledge is important in examining case studies, but I didn't have the pre-requisite of having taken one PLIR class before and was just fine!

As a politics major I decided to take this class after reading the reviews from 2016. However, this class has drastically changed since then. I HIGHLY recommend finding another class to take. Professor Copeland is incredibly boring and his lectures are dry. To make things worse, he is anti-technology in the class room. All his lectures are spoken with no powerpoint slides and students are prohibited from using laptops in lecture and discussion. Students were expected to print and annotate each weeks readings (100+) and bring them to discussion. TA's were ok depending who you had, grading was fair.

Every Politics student should take a class with Professor Copeland, he's by far the best professor in the department. He really helps you understand theory and then applies it to a number of historical cases. Midterm is an 8 page paper and final is three in-class essays where he gives you the prompts ahead of time. The only class better than this in the Politics Department is Copeland's 4000 level class