What is peace?  Why is it so elusive?  What do history, the social sciences, and recent experience tell us about historical patterns of war and peace, and the conditions that favor war-avoidance and the establishment, maintenance, and restoration of peace?  How do peacekeeping and peace-building contribute to human and international security?  How can you and public policy promote the cultural and institutional bases for peace at home and abroad?  Like its counterpart, The Problem of War, this course will approach the subject of peace from a holistic, humanistic, and interdisciplinary perspective.  It will examine peace as an existential condition and value, a socially constructed and historically determined human condition, and an institutionalized set of relationships among human communities at various levels (personal, community, national, and international) that can be created, sustained, lost, or restored.  Finally, it will investigate and evaluate practical ways to build peace, prevent war, and mitigate conflict should it occur.