FALL 2024
Geographies of Globalization & Development
This three-credit course provides an overview to the geographies of globalization and development in the world today. We begin by engaging with a variety of theoretical perspectives, definitions, and debates in order to establish the foundations upon which students can conceptualize and understand existing patterns of inequality, social injustice, and environmental conflicts. In order to further highlight the different ways in which development and globalization interventions are experienced and contested, in the second half of the course, we will focus our considerations towards specific contemporary issues at the forefront of globalization and development debates, including migration and refugees, urbanization, sustainable development, tourism, and alter-globalization social movements. This course is restricted to first-year students in the Global Citizenship Program.
Workshop for the Global Citizenship Program
This one-credit yearlong workshop, which is restricted to and required of participants in the Global Citizenship Program (GCP), is a companion to the core GCP fall course. The first semester of the workshop asks students to reflect critically on their own relationship to the concept of Global Citizenship. Through popular education and creative-based methods, students will explore their situated knowledges, worldviews, positionalities, and biases. The course engages with social, environmental, and epistemic justice themes through a decolonizing lens to question and reimagine how to embody critical global citizenship. By the end of the workshop, students will have tools to support their analysis and intentional engagement with the global-local community.
Recommended Companion Course: You are strongly encouraged to enroll in a foreign language at your level of proficiency.
SPRING 2025
Global Migration and Transnational Cultures in Modern Times
This Ampersand three credit seminar explores flows of people and cultural forms to shed light on negotiations of culture and identity as well as interrelations and links in a global context. We cover topics of migration, globalization, and cross-cultural dynamics from a multidisciplinary lens, by investigating case studies of Asian migration and of cultural forms from Hello Kitty and sushi to music and media. Global migration and different cultural references are separate and yet intertwined subjects in our investigation, as we illuminate mobile people and ethnic communities as agents in global cultural flows and reproduction. Students will take a trip to Latin America in the summer. This course is restricted to first-year students in the Global Citizenship Program.
Workshop for the Global Citizenship Program
This workshop, which is restricted to and required of participants in the Global Citizenship Program, is a continuation of the Fall L61 FYP 1503 workshop. The spring GCP Workshop is praxis-oriented and asks students to apply and further reflect on the concepts learned during the Fall. This year, we will collaborate with youth from the International Institute on a storytelling project focused on our relationship to global citizenship. This project aims to build relationships and foster a sense of community through shared narratives and diverse perspectives. Additionally, students are encouraged to volunteer in the community. Each workshop session will provide a space for collective sharing about our experiences in the community and offer tools for meaningful engagement, social change, community building, and collective care. Towards the end of this journey, students will have gained important frameworks to understand the global and its relationship to our local realities, meaningful life experiences collaborating across differences, and powerful tools for future community engagement. A trip at the end of the semester, after exams, will provide further opportunities for hands-on learning and interaction with organizations and people involved in the themes of the course.
Recommended Companion Course: You are strongly encouraged to enroll in a foreign language at your level of proficiency.
