Kim Stanley Robinson on "The Ministry for the Future"

How do we confront the planetary crises of our time with imagination, urgency, and justice? The Global Futures course, a core part of the Global Studies curriculum, has been exploring this question in depth. What better way to do so than by engaging with The Ministry for the Future?  

Global Studies Graduation Celebration

Join us as we celebrate the achievements of our Global Studies graduating majors! 

Please RSVP

Global Studies Faculty Meeting

Global Studies Faculty Lunch with Kim Stanley Robinson

Global Studies 2024-2025 Thesis Conference

 Join us for the 2024-2025 Global Studies Thesis Conference. 

Farewell, Global Studies Friends & Colleagues!

Join us as we celebrate and express our gratitude to our departing Global Studies faculty for their invaluable contributions. Let’s come together to honor their impact, share memories, and wish them well on their next adventures!

MANGLE: A Study of the Caribbean Diaspora’s Migration and the Destruction of the Caribbean Mangroves Through the Lens of Embodied Research

What does embodied performance enact about the Caribbean mangroves that we don’t already know from environmental studies? How can an embodied history of the Caribbean diaspora through an environmental lens help us further understand the complexities of  diasporic experiences? Through a framework of intersectional environmentalism and embodied knowledge, Santiago Lebrón and Losada-Tindall posit that performance is uniquely situated to potently communicate the magnitude of environmental frailty and how it connects to diasporic grief over the loss of a homeland.

Global Studies Study Abroad Info Session: Navigating Your Study Plan for a Successful Application

Planning to study abroad as a Global Studies major? Join Professor Nicole Svobodny for this info session to learn how to complete your Study Plan, a key component of your application.

Cultural Confluence on a Plate: Exploring Transculturation Through Food in St. Louis

This panel discussion will explore how diverse cultural influences have intersected, evolved, and merged within St. Louis's culinary landscape. It will delve into how food serves as a medium for identity, adaptation, resilience, and innovation among immigrant and indigenous communities within the city.

‘Unimaginable Atrocities’: The Neglected Catastrophe in Sudan and the History of Genocide in the Region

Please RSVP by following this link.

Political scientist and former international journalist Scott Straus will discuss the ongoing mass atrocities occurring in Sudan. He will place the atrocities in historical and regional context and explore the implications for contemporary policies of genocide prevention.

About the speaker

Scott Straus is professor of political science and the 2023 Mahatma M.K. Gandhi Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He studies political violence, genocide, human rights and post-conflict politics with an empirical focus on sub-Saharan Africa. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa (Cornell, 2015), which won the Grawemeyer Award for Improving World Order, the Lepgold Prize from Georgetown University, the Best Book in Conflict Processes from the American Political Science Association and the Best Book in Human Rights from the International Studies Association. Straus also wrote The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War (Cornell, 2006), which won the Best Book in Political Science from the Association of American Publishers and Honorable Mention for the Melville Herskovits Prize from the African Studies Association. He is a coeditor of vol. III of the Cambridge World History of Genocide (Cambridge, 2023), the author of Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2016), and co-author, with Barry Driscoll, of Introduction to International Studies: Global Forces, Interactions, and Tensions (Sage, 2022, 2nd ed.). He has received fellowships from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the United States Institute of Peace. In 2016, President Obama appointed him to the Council of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Straus continues to serve on the museum’s Committee on Conscience. Prior to his academic career, Straus was a freelance journalist based in Nairobi; he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his 1996 coverage of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Eve Darian-Smith — What is Global Studies?

The past, present, and future of Global Studies: a faculty and student discussion over lunch with Professor Eve Darian-Smith, a leader in the field of Global Studies and author of “Decolonizing Global Studies.”

Bear Beginnings Global Studies Open House

Join us to meet our amazing faculty and staff and learn about our major at the Bear Beginnings Open House!

Censoring Education and Policing Minds – A Global Trend

Higher education is under unprecedented attack, from large public universities to small liberal arts and community colleges. This talk discusses why this is happening and links events in the United States to similar attacks on higher education in countries around the world. What does this global trend signal in terms of building thriving and inclusive democratic societies?

Please RSVP by following this link.

About the speaker

Eve Darian-Smith is the founding chair of the Department of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her most recent book is Policing Higher Education: The Antidemocratic Attack on Scholars and Why It Matters (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025). As universities across the United States become epicenters of ideological warfare — from the contentious debates surrounding free speech and curriculum control to the denial of tenure for outspoken faculty — Policing Higher Education contextualizes these skirmishes within a broader global framework. Darian-Smith examines the intersecting global trends of rising authoritarianism and declining academic freedom, revealing how the United States is part of a larger pattern seen in democracies worldwide, including in Brazil, Hungary, Germany, India and the Philippines. Policing Higher Education challenges readers to view educational conflicts not merely as culture wars but as intense and connected struggles over economic, political and social power. Drawing from extensive scholarship, she humanizes the impacts of these attacks on scholars and students, offering poignant stories of persecution and resilience.

She is also author of Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis (Stanford University Press, 2022), recognized by the Independent Publisher Book Awards (silver medal in the Environment/Ecology Category) and winner of the 2022 Betty and Alfred McClung Lee Book Award, sponsored by the Association for Humanist Sociology.

Darian-Smith worked as a commercial lawyer in Australia before coming to the United States to pursue a PhD in sociocultural anthropology. Trained as a lawyer, historian and anthropologist, she is a critical interdisciplinary scholar interested in issues of postcolonial and decolonial theory, human rights, legal pluralism and sociolegal theory.

About the lecture series

James E. McLeod Memorial Lecture on Higher Education honors the esteemed vice chancellor of students, who died in 2011. The lecture series addresses the role of the liberal arts in higher education, a subject especially meaningful to Dean McLeod.

Read Policing Higher Education: The Antidemocratic Attack on Scholars and Why It Matters for free on Project MUSE.

Headline image by Lianhao Qu via Unsplash

A Conversation with Andy Mertha

In 1979, the Vietnamese army seized Phnom Penh, toppling Pol Pot's notoriously brutal regime. Yet the Khmer Rouge did not disintegrate. Instead, the movement continued to rule over swathes of Cambodia for almost another two decades even as it failed to become a legitimate governing organization.

Welcome Lunch: Global Citizenship Ampersand Program 2025–2026 Cohort

This welcome lunch is for students who are part of the 2025–2026 Global Citizenship Ampersand Program. Join us as we kick off the year by sharing a meal, getting to know one another, and meeting the three instructors who will accompany you throughout the program. We’ll introduce the journey ahead and begin building the relationships that will shape this experience. We’re so excited to begin this journey with you!

Faculty meeting

Faculty Meeting

Faculty Meeting

Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Information Session & Alumni Panel

Curious about fully funded opportunities to study abroad and immerse yourself in a new language? Join us on Wednesday, October 1, from 6:30–8:00 pm in McMillan Café for an information session on the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program, a prestigious U.S. Department of State initiative that offers intensive overseas study in 13 critical languages across South America, Africa, and Asia.

Major-Minor Fair

Interested in exploring Global Studies? Stop by our table (#29) during the Arts & Sciences Major-Minor Fair to learn more about our major, discover opportunities for study abroad and research, and meet faculty and staff who are excited to answer your questions and share what the program and our community have to offer.

The Ethical Economy of Transnational Surrogacy: Exploring Perspectives from Bogotá’s Surrogacy Market

Technology, Climate, and Culture: Production Sequences and Social Implications of Bone Tools in African Prehistory

During a period of intense climatic variability across Africa between 15,000-5,500 years ago, the continent experienced periods of fluctuating lake levels. Thousands of bone harpoons have been recovered from these paleolake archaeological sites. Such tools showcase a durable and specialized technology that hunter-gatherers from this time intricately manufactured to hunt the animals that called these shorelines their home. These include hippos, fish, turtles, and crocodiles. The National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi hold many of these artifacts in their collections today.

Global Studies Forum on Proposed Reorganization

Join our Director, Steve Miles, to learn more about the proposed major reorganization, share your concerns, reflections, and ideas. 

Majors Only. 

Fall 2025 Major-Minor Fair

Everything you're curious about all in one place!

Meet faculty and students from across Arts & Sciences, explore research opportunities, and learn how your major can connect to future careers. Whether you're undecided, considering a double major, or just exploring -- stop by!

Learn more details about the Major-Minor Fair, or find a list of all the upcoming Sophomore Series events on the ArtSci Events Calendar.

Global Citizenship Program All Cohorts Dinner

A gathering for current and former GCP students to build community. 

People1st: Civil Society Call to Release Civilian Prisoners Related to the War in Ukraine

Join us for a public lecture with Denis Shedov, a human rights activist and doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. 

Reparation for Survivors of Conflict Related Sexual Violence: Is it possible? How? Experiences working in Ukraine, Colombia, and Syria

How to define reparation for victims of violations committed massively in armed conflict or by repressive states? How to provide reparation for survivors of conflict related sexual violence? What obstacles survivors often find and how they can be addressed and eventually overcome? What are the main challenges reparation for survivors of sexual violence in Ukraine, Colombia, and Syria face, and which strategies are being implemented? How reparation can be implemented in ways that contribute to a broader acknowledgement, accountability and conflict prevention effort?

Weaving “Brocades”: Rules, Textuality, and Games of Reading

This talk centers on a set of word puzzles known as “brocades” to demonstrate how gaming, especially through its rules (dufa), expanded and reimagined the act of reading wen in early modern China. “Jin,” or “brocade,” as an umbrella term, refers to a series of creative applications of the Chinese writing system that mimic everyday objects, in which readers were required to follow a specific trajectory that imitated the process of weaving a piece of brocade.

Sin Fronteras: Mapping and Writing on Labor, Immigration, and Revolution in Southern California

Dr. Aguilar will be presenting on a new digital humanities archive, the Sin Fronteras (Borderless) Project, the first multimedia repository and public history resource to document and map the histories of labor and social movements in the US-Mexico borderlands from 1848 to the present. Using archival documents from his new book project, Inland Against Empire: Class Solidarity, Racial Terror, and the Mexican Revolution in Southern California, Dr.

Global Studies End of the Semester Faculty and Staff Happy Hour

New Majors Welcome

This session is a chance to welcome you to the Global Studies community! We’ll share information about study abroad and research opportunities, our student organization Sigma Iota Rho, and other ways to get involved. There will be plenty of time to ask questions, meet other GS majors, and learn about the resources that will support you throughout your journey in Global Studies.

Faculty Meeting

Join us for our first faculty meeting of the semester! 

Faculty Meeting

Faculty Meeting

Global Studies End of Year Happy Hour

Join us to celebrate the end of the academic year!

Global Studies Graduation Reception

Come celebrate our Global Studies graduating majors with us! We’ll share a few words from our director, raise a toast, and enjoy great food together.

Global Studies Senior Honors Thesis Conference

Please join us for the annual Global Studies Senior Honors Thesis Conference, featuring presentations by Global Studies majors on their thesis research. The conference highlights the importance of student scholarship and the role of research in deepening our understanding of complex global issues.

Sigma Iota Rho's Cultural Expo

Enjoy live performances, explore cultural group tables, and grab some free food while you’re at it. It’s a night of community, culture, and fun—hope to see you there!
 

SIR's Spring Town Hall: Art as Resistance

The Devil You Know: Hunting for Satan in Putin's Russia

Who knew that, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, they would soon claim that they were fighting the forces of Satan? How did an imperialist land grab get translated into a struggle with the forces of darkness? The Soviet Union was spared the American Satanic Panic of the 1980s, but the years following the collapse of the USSR saw the rise of a frenzied rhetoric about Satanism through a combination of imported anxieties over “cults,” the resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church, and heated opposition to “dangerous” cultural imports such as Harry Potter and Halloween.

Intersections of Public Health and Applied Linguistics: Advancing Research Through Integrated Methods

Conducting Research with Human Subject in Global Contexts: Attaining IRB Approval at Washu

Global Studies Senior Honors Thesis Information Session

Interested in pursuing a Global Studies Senior Honors Thesis? Join us for an info session to learn what the thesis is, how the process works, and whether it might be a good fit for your academic and intellectual goals.

We’ll host a virtual session at 10am.  Please RSVP. 

"Destructive Imagination: Male Fantasies and the Emotional Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine" A Book Talk With Mariia Kurbak

The Global Studies program at Washington University in St. Louis invites you to a book talk by Maria Kurbak, Postdoctoral Associate in Global Studies, presenting her newly published book Destructive Imagination: Male Fantasies and the Emotional Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026).

Unearthing fine roots in the Ecuadorian Andes

CCHP Speaker Series: "Causes and Consequences of the Russia-Ukraine War"

James M. Goldgeier, Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C, where he served as dean from 2011-2017 and currently serves as the PhD Program Director.

Goldgeier is also a Research Affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, both at Stanford University. He is author or editor of six books and numerous articles and essays and focuses primarily on U.S.-NATO-Russia relations since the end of the Cold War. As part of his commitment to publicly engaged scholarship, he is a senior adviser for Bridging the Gap, an initiative to strengthen the relationship between research and policy to benefit society.

More details about this lecture to come.

The CCHP is generously sponsored and funded by the Office of the Dean of Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

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For more information, please contact Professor Krister Knapp via email at kknapp@wustl.edu, or via phone at 314-935-6838.

The Struggle of Visibility: Black Activism and Citizenship in Current Italy

Join us for a talk with Black Italian activist, Kwanza Musi Dos Santos. Her talk, titled "The Struggle of Visibility: Black Activism and Citizenship in Current Italy," will explore the intricate networks of activism that work towards disarming and erasing racial discrimination in Italy. This event is free and open to all. You can join us either in-person at Ridgley 122 or virtually via Zoom. 

Please RSVP via email to obtain the zoom link (elenad@wustl.edu). 

On Kwanza Musi Dos Santos 

Kwansa Musi Dos Santos is an Italian and afrobrazilian expert of DEI, trainer, and consultant. She is specialized on antiracism, environmental justice and intersectionality, and currently works with profit and non-profit organizations all over Europe.  

After a bachelor's degree in political science and international relations at Roma Tre University, an Erasmus exchange experience in Jena University (Germany), she attended a master's in management of cultural diversity at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.  

She is a member of the Advisory Board at the European organization "Union of Justice," an independent, people of color (POC) led organization dedicated to racial justice and
climate justice. 

She is also co-founder of the inter-cultural Association "QuestaèRoma", created in 2013 and led by a group of young Italians of color aimed to erase any form of discrimination through culture, politics, social awareness and art. 

Recently, she has been teaching with doc Camilla Hawthorne and Angelica Pesarini about Black Italy at the previous three editions of the Black Europe Summer School in Amsterdam and she was featured on Vice News Documentary about “Black Lives Matter in Italy”.