Beyond the Textbook: Using Literary Fiction and Narrative Nonfiction to Teach International Relations and Migration

Literary fiction and narrative nonfiction are underutilized yet pedagogically powerful resources in undergraduate International Relations (IR) courses. This article draws on the author’s experience teaching two courses at a small liberal arts college (Refugees in International Relations and Politics of Migration) to examine how literary and narrative texts cultivate multi-theoretical analysis, empathy across difference, and critical engagement with the human stakes of global politics. Locating the approach within the aesthetic turn in IR scholarship, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and Nussbaum’s philosophy of the literary imagination, the article outlines three interconnected arguments for integrating fiction into IR syllabi, describes a four-stage integration model developed across multiple course iterations, provides a structured text-selection table organized by displacement context and IR theory lens, and discusses the ethics of teaching difficult material. The article offers instructors a transferable framework for syllabus design.