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Global Studies (GLOS) Courses

Academic Unit: Global Studies Department

GLOS 1015W - Globalization: Issues and Challenges [WI GP]
(4 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was INTR 1015 until 05-SEP-00, HIST 1015V (inactive, was HIST 1015H until 05-SEP-00), GLOS 1015V (inactive, was INTR 1016 until 05-SEP-00), HIST 1015W (starting 02-SEP-08, ending 07-SEP-04, was HIST 1015 until 05-SEP-00), HIST 1019 (inactive)
Increased global interconnections over past 50 years. Impact of information revolution on human rights, economic inequality, ecological challenges, and decolonization. Comparative cases from Asia, Africa, Latin America, or Middle East.
GLOS 1105 - From Climate Crisis to Climate Justice [ENV]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall)
This course will explore one of our biggest threats today, global climate crisis, and understand it as deeply entangled with other pressing concerns such as deepening social inequality, racial and gender injustice, food insecurity and environmental devastation, war and violence. We will understand it as a global problem with different regional specificities and histories, learning from a multitude of perspectives, sciences, voices, and experiences. The course will explore how working to collectively resolve this environmental issue requires a multi-pronged approach that enables peoples around the world to imagine--and strive for--a world that reverses the course of history, moving from climate crisis to justice.
GLOS 1112 - Social Justice Across Borders [GP]
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Every Spring)
Students will explore the ideas and practices of social justice movements and how those movements shape people?s lived experiences in the world. This class will consider examples of effective cause-based movements to advance fairness and dignity on topics such as workers? rights, environmental justice, racial and gender equality, and human rights. Students will work together on a current social justice issue -- with both local and global implications -- designing their own responses to that issue. Through this hands-on case study, we will unpack the tools and strategies of social justice movements, use interdisciplinary perspectives to investigate structural causes and key actors, imagine what change would look like and identify tactics for bringing about that change. Community activists, artists, and advocates will be regular visitors to the class and available to students.
GLOS 3105 - Exploring the World: The Practice of Interdisciplinary Research
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall)
Equivalent courses: GLOS 3105H
This class introduces Global Studies students to some of the major disciplines and methods used to make knowledge about the social world. The course first addresses fascinating philosophical questions, such as how is knowledge a social product? How are knowing and understanding different? How might we think of ignorance, too, as something constructed? We then turn from theory to practice, and to the question, how can we frame our questions, and enact our research in humble and ethically principled ways? Students will respond to this task by designing collaborative research projects. They will first identify and define a real world issue; they will review different disciplines' methods for defining and approaching the issue, and then they will jointly create a collaborative research design. The course will help Global Studies students understand the interdisciplinary nature of the Global Studies major, and it will help them begin to think about the goals, interests, and methods of their senior projects.
GLOS 3105H - Honors: Exploring the World: The Practice of Interdisciplinary Research
(3 cr; Prereq-Honors.; A-F only; offered Every Fall)
Equivalent courses: GLOS 3105 (starting 06-SEP-22)
This class introduces Global Studies students to some of the major disciplines and methods used to make knowledge about the social world. The course first addresses fascinating philosophical questions, such as, how is knowledge a social product? How are knowing and understanding different? How might we think of ignorance, too, as something constructed? We then turn from theory to practice, and to the question, how can we frame our questions, and enact our research in humble and ethically principled ways? Students will respond to this task by designing collaborative research projects. They will first identify and define a real world issue; they will review different disciplines' methods for defining and approaching the issue, and then they will jointly create a collaborative research design. The course will help Global Studies students understand the interdisciplinary nature of the Global Studies major, and it will help them begin to think about the goals, interests, and methods of their senior projects.
GLOS 3143 - Place, Community, Culture [CIV]
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Every Spring)
Students in the Global Studies program study not only the powerful political institutions and economic processes that shape our world, they also acquire the skills to perceive and investigate their own place and identities, and to interpret creative work that express different ways of being. In GLOS 3143 'Place, Community, Culture' students will explore their own locations, identities, and experiences in the context of our fraught and ethically complex times. The emphasis is on practice, on seeing one's own life as something to be enriched by seeing and feeling the world in new ways. Students will encounter a mix of philosophical works, artistic texts (novels, films, poetry, painting, music, and other forms of media) and scholarly texts that together will help students expand their ingrained and conditioned ways of seeing the world. Class themes might include self and other, community and alienation, place and placelessness, home and homelessness. Students will examine the place of ethics and politics in the negotiation of their identities and experiences. Assignments might include essays that ask students to interpret artistic works that present different avenues of insight, or creative assignments that ask you to reflect on your own experiences in relation to course readings and themes. Students will conclude the class more confident of their ability to notice and negotiate the dilemmas they will encounter in their personal and professional lives.
GLOS 3144 - Knowledge, Power, and the Politics of Representation in Global Studies
(3 cr; Prereq-soph, jr, or sr; A-F only; offered Every Fall; may be repeated for 4 credits)
Equivalent courses: was AREA 3144 until 05-SEP-00, GLOS 3144H
This course provides an introductory overview of core theories and concepts that prepare students for successful completion of the Global Studies curriculum. In this half of the Global Studies core course sequence, students will investigate questions pertaining to how representations of the modern world in popular media and academic writing contribute to, reaffirm, and often challenge relations of inequality and division tied to such categories as ethnicity, gender, and race. Drawing on a wide range of interdisciplinary sources including magazines, novels, films, and digital media, these questions may include: How do cultural representations of the Global South reinforce European imperial and colonial projects? What role do mass-market magazines and newspapers have in constructing difference and producing stereotypes that justify imperialist attitudes? How does the development of technologies, from railroads to the internet, affect collective experiences of time and space? How is 'fake news' and intentional misrepresentation a threat to democracy and to the ecological security of the Earth? Students will meet twice a week for lecture and attend a weekly recitation section, with assignments that include short writing exercises and/or weekly Canvas posts and a midterm and final examination. This course will show how the politics of representation and knowledge production relate to changing formations of power, while giving students the conceptual vocabulary and critical skills to prepare for subsequent Global Studies courses.
GLOS 3144H - Honors: Knowledge, Power, and the Politics of Representation in Global Studies
(3 cr; Prereq-Honors soph, jr, or sr; A-F only; offered Every Fall)
Equivalent courses: GLOS 3144 (starting 21-MAY-01, was AREA 3144 until 05-SEP-00)
This course provides an introductory overview of core theories and concepts that prepare students for successful completion of the Global Studies curriculum. In this half of the Global Studies core course sequence, students will investigate questions pertaining to how representations of the modern world in popular media and academic writing contribute to, reaffirm, and often challenge relations of inequality and division tied to such categories as ethnicity, gender, and race. Drawing on a wide range of interdisciplinary sources including magazines, novels, films, and digital media, these questions may include: How do cultural representations of the Global South reinforce European imperial and colonial projects? What role do mass-market magazines and newspapers have in constructing difference and producing stereotypes that justify imperialist attitudes? How does the development of technologies, from railroads to the internet, affect collective experiences of time and space? How is 'fake news' and intentional misrepresentation a threat to democracy and to the ecological security of the Earth? Students will meet twice a week for lecture and attend a weekly recitation section with assignments that include short writing exercises and/or weekly Canvas posts and a midterm and final examination. This course will show how the politics of representation and knowledge production relate to changing formations of power, while giving students the conceptual vocabulary and critical skills to prepare for subsequent Global Studies courses.
GLOS 3145 - Global Modernity, the Nation-State, and Capitalism
(3 cr; Prereq-soph, jr, or sr Units: 3.00; A-F only; offered Every Spring)
Equivalent courses: was GLOS 3101 until 05-SEP-06, was INTR 3101 until 05-SEP-00, GLOS 3145H (starting 05-SEP-00, was GLOS 3101H until 05-SEP-06, was INTR 3151 until 05-SEP-00)
This course provides an introductory overview of core theories and concepts that prepare students for successful completion of the Global Studies curriculum. In this half of the Global Studies core course sequence, students will investigate questions pertaining to the emergence of global modernity, capitalism, and the nation-state, with particular focus on theoretical concepts and institutional forms. Drawing on a wide range of interdisciplinary sources including critical theory, philosophy, and texts from the social sciences, these questions may include: How did reason and culture emerge as key concepts in modernity, and how were they associated with transformations in time and space? How did the nation-state become a dominant political unit in the West, and how do postcolonial African states challenge its structure? What is the relationship between the Western liberal tradition, secularity, and violence? What are the histories and internal dynamics of the capitalist economy? Students will meet twice a week for lecture and attend a weekly recitation section, with assignments that include short writing exercises, a group project, and midterm and final examinations. This course will contextualize and trouble aspects of the global that are easily abstracted and taken for granted, while giving students the conceptual vocabulary and critical skills to prepare for subsequent Global Studies courses.
GLOS 3145H - Honors: Global Modernity, the Nation-State, and Capitalism
(3 cr; Prereq-Honors soph, jr, or sr Units: 3.00; A-F only; offered Every Spring)
Equivalent courses: was GLOS 3101H until 05-SEP-06, was INTR 3151 until 05-SEP-00, GLOS 3145 (starting 05-SEP-00, was GLOS 3101 until 05-SEP-06, was INTR 3101 until 05-SEP-00)
This course provides an introductory overview of core theories and concepts that prepare students for successful completion of the Global Studies curriculum. In this half of the Global Studies core course sequence, students will investigate questions pertaining to the emergence of global modernity, capitalism, and the nation-state, with particular focus on theoretical concepts and institutional forms. Drawing on a wide range of interdisciplinary sources including critical theory, philosophy, and texts from the social sciences, these questions may include: How did reason and culture emerge as key concepts in modernity, and how were they associated with transformations in time and space? How did the nation-state become a dominant political unit in the West, and how do postcolonial African states challenge its structure? What is the relationship between the Western liberal tradition, secularity, and violence? What are the histories and internal dynamics of the capitalist economy? Students will meet twice a week for lecture and attend a weekly recitation section with assignments that include short writing exercises, a group project, and midterm and final examinations. This course will contextualize and trouble aspects of the global that are easily abstracted and taken for granted, while giving students the conceptual vocabulary and critical skills to prepare for subsequent Global Studies courses.
GLOS 3215 - Supercapitalism: Labor, Consumption & the Environment in the New Global Economy
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Every Fall)
Equivalent courses: SOC 3215
From the jeans you buy online to the place mats you purchase at Target, most of the items we consume are made somewhere else. Global production networks link consumers of fresh green beans in Britain with growers, pickers, and packers in Zambia. And it isn't only products that move around the globe; so do people. Thanks to immense economic inequalities, wealthy families in the global North enjoy the cheap labor of Eastern European, Filipino, and Honduran nannies, house cleaners, and gardeners. How did this global economy come to be, how has it impacted workers, consumers, and ecosystems, and what are its ethical and political implications? This course focuses on the changes that have occurred over the last 70 years in the realms of labor, consumption, and the environment. We'll examine the movement away from regulated national economies to an integrated global economy; changing patterns and organization of production, distribution, consumption, and waste disposal; and new forms of capital-labor-state relations. Some of the topics we explore include the global trade in body parts; the rise of shareholder capitalism; the new "platform" economy; the growing insecurity of work; and the environmental changes global capitalism has wrought. We end by considering alternatives to the "business-as-usual" (BAU) economy.
GLOS 3225 - The Power of the 1%: Global Philanthropy and the Making of a New World
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: SOC 3225
Philanthropy has come to play an increasingly important role in the economy and society, on both a national and global level. Americans gave away $450 billion in 2019, or a little over 2 percent of our country's GDP (Giving USA 2020). A few mega-philanthropists, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg and others donated mind-boggling sums of money. These individuals and their foundations are having a significant impact around the world, changing the way public education is carried out in many countries, how global health priorities are defined, how public policies are made, and how African agricultural systems are organized. Forbes magazine reports that there are 1,645 billionaires in the world today, 80% more than a decade ago. While some observers look positively on this philanthropic outpouring, others suggest it may be eroding democracy. In this course, we study philanthropy from a variety of perspectives, exploring who gives away money and why, how this "gift" impacts givers, receivers, and taxpayers, and what the relationship is between global philanthropy and power. Specific topics include the history of foundations; religion and charity; philanthropy and politics; consumption-based giving (or "brand aid"), and philanthropy and social policy. We'll examine case studies such as the Gates Foundation's role in African agriculture. Students will do "participant observation" in a local charity, and a research project on the philanthropic foundation or giving practice of their choice.
GLOS 3231 - Geography of the World Economy [SOCS GP]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall)
Equivalent courses: GEOG 3331 (starting 21-OCT-14)
Geographical distribution of resources affecting development. Location of agriculture, industry, services. Agglomeration of economic activities, urbanization, regional growth. International trade. Changing global development inequalities. Impact on nations, regions, cities.
GLOS 3305 - Science for Sale: Environment, Capital, and Medicine
(3 cr; Prereq-soph or jr or sr; A-F only; offered Every Fall)
This class uses a social justice lens to explore the interrelations of scientific discoveries, unequal global economies, and commodification. We will look at practices, new technologies, and policies that are trenchant for the negative impacts they have on environments broadly defined, and for human and non-human populations. We will ask how these practices, technologies, and policies - and the social and economic contexts that produce them - variably impact the health, well being, and valuation of particular populations. In a series of interconnected themes, we will examine what factors produce food insecurity and for whom; where and why pollution of resources such as water happens; the history and current state of antibiotic resistance; climate change and its various effects; and how new technologies can be life-saving and life-denying according to the ways national and global policies determine who gains access and who does not. We will also look at the innovative ways grassroots movements tackle issues confronting particular groups, what constitutes positive social change and by whose definition, and potential ways forward. Final projects focus on website construction or policy documents that have application beyond the classroom.
GLOS 3401W - International Human Rights Law [WI GP]
(3 cr; A-F or Audit; offered Every Fall)
Equivalent courses: was GLOS 3401 until 20-JAN-15
This course presents an introductory overview of the idea of human rights, its social and legal foundations and contemporary global issues. In the class, students will learn about the laws and procedures designed to protect the human rights of individuals and groups, with a special focus on the United Nations system. The course explores the conceptual underpinnings of human rights such as who is eligible to have rights, where those rights come from and who is responsible for guaranteeing them. Students will learn about how international laws are made and interpreted, and will consider the geo-political context which shapes human rights laws and procedures. Because of the evolving nature of the laws and issues in this field, students are encouraged to think analytically and ethically about how to address the many human rights challenges in the world today. The course will cover current human rights issues, including the right to health care, housing and other economic and social rights; and the right to life, freedom from torture and other civil and political rights. The course is writing intensive. The required paper for the class is a model complaint to the United Nations about a country and issue of the student's choosing. The class invites discussion and uses class exercises to engage students in the course material by shaping arguments for various legal fora.
GLOS 3407 - Global Islamophobia
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Periodic Spring)
Equivalent courses: SOC 3207
Throughout the world, anti-Muslim activists and politicians have been increasingly attacking Muslims and Islam. And, international organizations have reported human rights violations against Muslims worldwide. Recently, in the United States, there have been calls to ban Muslims, as well as register American Muslims. In France, Muslim women are prohibited to wear a headscarf in high school. And in Myanmar, a genocide against Muslim minorities is currently underway. While anti-Islamic discourses have a long history in many societies worldwide (including Muslim-majority countries), the course seeks to explore the global rise of these discourses since September 11, 2001. The course examines the cultural, political, and historical origins of Islamophobic discourses that cast Muslims as "violent," "hateful," and "uncivilized." Class sessions will include some lecture but will be largely discussion based. Assignments will ask students to think and write critically about course concepts, debate and participate in simulation exercises, and reflect on personal thoughts and feelings about course content.
GLOS 3412 - What is Equality? [CIV]
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Every Spring)
Equivalent courses: GLOS 5412 (inactive)
Course explores debates about equality. Equality has many dimensions--e.g.: economic, social, political. These forms cannot be reconciled. Liberal democracies affirm the principle of political equality but defend, even in principle, social and economic inequalities. Animal rights add another wrinkle: very few of those who fight for these rights would claim political equality for animals.
GLOS 3415W - Global Institutions of Power: World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization [WI GP]
(3 cr; A-F or Audit; offered Periodic Fall)
Equivalent courses: was GLOS 3415 until 20-JAN-15, SOC 3417W
This course will introduce students to some of the world's most powerful global institutions -- such as the World Bank (IBRD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the United Nations, and affiliated agencies such as UNHCR (for refugee support). We will follow their efforts to promote a style of global development practices -- large-scale capital lending and global expertise building -- that has crystallized into a common understanding of how global north-south dynamics should progress. Cases pursued in class may include their lending and debt policies, dam building and energy projects, climate resilience and water loans, and the ways they mediate free trade agreements among competing countries. We will also hear from the multitude of voices, theories, and practices that offer alternative visions as to how peoples strive to produce a more just, socially equitable, and climate-safe world. We will use books, articles, films, in-class debates, case study exploration, small-group projects, and guest speakers to create a lively discussion-based classroom environment.
GLOS 3602 - Other Worlds: Globalization and Culture
(3 cr; A-F or Audit; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was INTR 3602 until 05-SEP-00
'Globalization' and 'Culture' are both terms that have been defined and understood in a variety of ways and the significance of which continues to be debated to the present, both inside and outside the academy. Globalization has been talked about both as an irresistible historical force, tending toward the creation of an increasingly interconnected, or, as is sometimes claimed, an increasingly homogeneous world, and as a set of processes, the outcome of which remains open-ended and uncertain, as likely to produce new kinds of differences as universal sameness. Culture meanwhile has been variously defined as that which distinguishes humans from other species (and which all humans therefore share) and as that which divides communities of humans from one another on the basis of different beliefs, customs, values etc. This course reflects on some of the possible meanings of both "Globalization" and "Culture" and asks what we can learn by considering them in relation to one another. How do the phenomena associated with globalization, such as increasing flows of people, capital, goods and information across increasing distances challenge our understandings of culture, including the idea that the world is composed of so many discrete and bounded "cultures"? At the same time, does culture and its associated expressive forms, including narrative fiction, poetry and film, furnish us with new possibilities for thinking about globalization? Does global interconnection produce a single, unified world, or multiple worlds? Are the movements of people, goods, ideas and information across distances associated with new developments caused by contemporary globalization, or have they been going on for centuries or even millennia? Might contemporary debates about climate change and environmental crisis compel us to consider these phenomena in new ways? The course addresses these questions as they have been discussed by scholars from a variety of disciplines and as they have been i
GLOS 3605 - Word, Image, Technology: Media as History and Culture
(3 cr; A-F or Audit; offered Every Spring)
Equivalent courses: JOUR 3614 (starting 07-SEP-10), HIST 3705 (ending 22-MAY-17, starting 02-SEP-08)
This is a course about the history of the relationship between media and culture. We will read historians, anthropologists, and other scholars who study different forms of mediated human communication today, and we will examine some of the key moments in the growth of humanity?s powers of communication. Students will acquire a vocabulary with which to think about the history of media. We will go on several field trips to encounter actual technologies, such as medieval codexes and radio apparatuses from the 1920s, and students will do an inventory of their own media use and compare that to those of families or friends. Our key question will be about the role media has played?and continues to play?in the constitution of identities.
GLOS 3606 - Art and Incarceration: Prison Voices and Visions
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Spring)
Prisons are noisy places: clanking of metal, echoing voices, violence, laughter, and all the sounds of people living their lives in overcrowded congregate facilities without privacy or control over their surroundings. But the sounds of prisons -- the voices, the stories - are not often heard outside the prison walls. This course is meant to provide a corrective - a small corrective - to that silence. In GLOS 3606, Art and Incarceration: Prison Voices and Visions, we will read, view, and listen to creative work by incarcerated artists from around the world, and we will consider: (1) what these artists have to say about the(ir) world(s), (2) how art provides a space for resistance and survival within the walls of the prison, and (3) how the conditions of incarceration impact the creative process and affect our access to this important body of work. Because the purpose of this course is to amplify and analyze the voices and visions of incarcerated artists, this course requires substantial reading, viewing, and listening. There are weekly writing assignments, but they are short and informal. There are no longer papers. There is a final take-home essay exam.
GLOS 3609 - Novels and Nations [LITR GP]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall)
Equivalent courses: GWSS 3304 (inactive)
How do emerging and postcolonial nations enlist fiction in their claims to sovereignty and autonomy? How do the novel's literary techniques and strategies perform a unique brand of political and social critique vis a vis nations and nationalisms? We will focus on novels from a variety of national contexts from the Global North and South to show how literary analysis can be a companion to the social sciences in illuminating the historical and social contexts of the nation-state. In addition, we will consider the function of literature in allowing stateless nations to imagine a shared connection. We will also focus on the inner workings of the novel in order to understand the conventions and mechanisms of the genre and how it interconnects with related forms such as cinema, performance, and the visual arts.
GLOS 3611 - Stories, Bodies, Movements
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Periodic Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 6 credits)
Equivalent courses: GLOS 5611, GWSS 3611
For most of us, stories seem to simply 'happen.' We listen to stories, we tell stories, we are moved by stories, and we retell stories. However, every act of telling stories involves making decisions or moves, and each re-telling of a familiar story may either give birth to new meanings, nuances, and affects, or, it may erase their possibility. Thus, each storyteller can be seen as a translator of stories with a responsibility to retell stories ethically. It is precisely through these translational acts that all politics become politics of storytelling. In this course, we will consider the ways in which the politics of the global and the intimate derive their meanings, effects, and affects from the circulation, transaction, and re-tellings of stories within and across borders. We will ask how a praxis of ethical engagement with politics can be imagined as a praxis of receiving and retelling stories. By immersing ourselves in the process of remembering, telling, listening, trimming, interweaving, distilling, and performing stories, we will consider how ethical receiving and retelling of stories involves continuous revising, repositioning, and re-theorizing of such vexed and entangled terrains and terminologies as identity, community, rights, and justice, as well as the contingent meanings of knowledge, truth, and ethics. This course engages this terrain through a mode of active learning in which all the participants will read and reflect, listen and discuss, tell and retell, watch and play, move and perform collectively. By becoming aware of the ways in which our minds-bodies-souls are inserted in the receiving and translation of stories, we will grapple together with the ways in which our bodies--as our embodiments--help to relationally shape not only our own performances but also our responses to the performances of other living and moving bodies around us. We will learn from writings, film, songs, and plays by writers, artists, activists, and thinkers from a r
GLOS 3612 - Global Tourism, Ecology, and the Creative Arts in Indonesia
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Summer; 6 financial aid progress units; may be repeated for 6 credits; may be repeated 2 times)
Equivalent courses: GWSS 3612
Students in this course will study cultural traditions, the creative industry and tourism in Indonesia as an important part of the economy of the global south. The course will be held on the sites of dance performances, temples, heritage houses, and other cultural sites. Artists, cultural practitioners, cultural ministry officers, and policy makers for the tourism industry will serve as guest lecturers throughout. The course will be centered on creative intervention through the tourism industry and the arts and the particularity of creative impulse, gender difference, value of tradition, and modernity as a concept in Balinese culture.
GLOS 3613W - Stuffed and Starved: The Politics of Eating [SOCS WI GP]
(3 cr; A-F or Audit; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: SOC 3613W (starting 02-SEP-08), GLOS 3613V (inactive), SOC 3613V (inactive)
This course takes a cross-cultural, historical, and transnational perspective to the study of the global food system. Themes explored include: different cultural and social meanings attached to food; social class and consumption; the global food economy; global food chains; work in the food sector; the alternative food movement; food justice; environmental consequences of food production.
GLOS 3681 - Gender and the Family in the Islamic World
(3 cr; Prereq-At least soph; 1001 recommended; A-F only; offered Periodic Spring)
Equivalent courses: SOC 3681 (starting 20-JAN-09), GWSS 3681, RELS 3716
This course explores the experiences of Muslim women and Muslim families from a historical and comparative perspective. Expanding the discussion on Muslim women's lives and experiences beyond the Middle East, by also centralizing on the experiences of Muslim women and families outside of this geographical area highlights the complex and diverse everyday experiences of Muslim women around the world. This wider lens exposes the limitations intrinsic in the stereotypical representation of Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular. We will explore the intricate web of gender and family power relations, and how these are contested and negotiated in these societies. Some of the themes the course explores include the debates on Muslim women and colonial representations, sexual politics, family, education and health, women and paid work, gender and human rights, and Islamic feminisms debates.
GLOS 3705 - Migrations: People in Motion [GP]
(3 cr; Prereq-soph, jr, or sr; A-F or Audit; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: SOC 3505
Students in this course will tackle debates related to migration from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and will compare and connect diverse migration trends around the world (Asia, Africa, Latin America, and North America). Students will critically engage with various paradigms on the geopolitical, racial, and gender power dynamics that anchor migration processes and outcomes. Why would the movement of individuals from some parts of the world (often from the least developed regions to the highly developed Western nations) create such strong and highly charged debates? How are cross border social and economic relations of individuals and households maintained and perpetuated? What are particular governments doing to either encourage or hinder these movements? How are current migrations different from earlier eras? Is this gendered, and if so, how and why? The objective of this course is to explore the above questions through academic and policy published literature.
GLOS 3706 - Criminalization of Migration: Borders, Crossings, Detention
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Every Fall)
Somali British poet Warsan Shire?s 2009 poem ?Home? beseeches readers to ?understand/ that no one puts their children in a boat/ unless the water is safer than the land.? The poem went viral in 2015, shared widely by those attempting to counter the virulent anti-migrant rhetoric animating political discourse and elections in the US and around the world. The rise in authoritarianism and racist nationalisms, especially in Europe and in settler states, is evident in policies such as the US ?Remain in Mexico? policy, the EU?s increased externalization of immigration enforcement and policies of deterrence, and Australia?s mandatory offshore detention. But this anti-migrant turn is not new, and this course argues that the criminalization of migration and migrants (and of the mobility of indigenous people across state borders - even when those borders divide their nations) has a long history that is deeply ingrained in our most fundamental understandings of the state, borders, and belonging. In this interdisciplinary course, students will both unpack that history and engage - through literature and film - migrant voices that contest the dehumanization and criminalization of their lives and communities, speaking back not only to the most aggressive forms of xenophobia, but to the more widely held opinion that there are ?good immigrants? and ?bad immigrants.? We will approach these topics through three key concepts: borders, crossings, and detention.
GLOS 3707 - Disposable People?: Surplus Value, Surplus Humanity
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
The world today confronts a volatile scenario shaped by three intertwined political-economic processes: First, growth in surplus value or corporate profits fueled by monopoly capitalism, wage stagnation, and automation-driven improvements in productivity; second, growth in surplus or discarded matter fueled by rising consumerism and planned obsolescence in products and services; and finally, growth in surplus humanity or under-employed, unwanted populations fueled by structural transformations in the world economy with declining opportunities for good quality jobs. The combined result manifests as widening economic inequality between the 'haves' and 'have nots'; a politically volatile situation of racialized polarization in which huge numbers of people in entire regions, countries, or sectors of the globe, have little, declining, or no access to secure waged work; and an ecological crisis where the planet finds itself ill equipped to handle growing quantities of waste matter, including greenhouse gases. Our primary focus in the course will be to understand populations that are "cast out" of society, the forces that produce this condition, the mechanisms of rule by which surplus populations are managed, and the way people live and cope with their superfluity. Class sessions are a combination of lectures, debates, student-led discussions, and audio-visual materials. 60-70 pages of weekly reading, bi-weekly commentaries, take-home midterms, short presentation, and final paper.
GLOS 3800 - Topics in Global Studies Abroad (Topics course)
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Periodic Summer; may be repeated for 9 credits; may be repeated 3 times)
Topics shell for GLOS study abroad courses.
GLOS 3896 - Global Studies Internship
(3 cr; Prereq-dept consent; A-F or Audit; offered Every Spring)
Equivalent courses: was GLOS 3402 until 22-JAN-19
Hands-on experience at Twin Cities organizations working at the nexus of the local and the global. Work 100 hours in non-governmental organization. Substantive coursework in Global Studies is required.
GLOS 3900 - Topics in Global Studies (Topics course)
(1 cr [max 5]; A-F only; offered Every Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 15 credits; may be repeated 3 times)
Equivalent courses: was INTR 3900 until 05-SEP-00
Topics vary each semester. See Class Schedule.
GLOS 3969 - Democracy and popular politics in India
(3 cr; A-F or Audit; offered Periodic Fall)
Equivalent courses: HIST 3489 (starting 02-SEP-08)
Democracy is not only a political order; it is also a popular culture and politics. This course explores three tumultuous moments of this politics and culture in India: the pluralist nationalism which characterized Gandhian nonviolence and the Indian constitution, the majoritarianism that was often this pluralism's undertow, and Hindutva or Hindu supremacism, the now dominant populist ideology.
GLOS 3981W - Capstone Seminar [WI]
(3 cr; Prereq-dept consent; A-F or Audit; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was INTR 3981 until 05-SEP-00, GLOS 3985V (starting 20-JAN-15, was GLOS 3550V until 19-JAN-21, was INTR 3550 until 05-SEP-00)
In the Capstone Seminar, students will write a 25-30 page undergraduate thesis on a self-defined topic related to their thematic and/or regional concentration. The course is designed to support academic research and writing in an interdisciplinary field, and to provide students a space to synthesize what they have learned in the classroom, through study abroad, in internships, and from life experiences. Students can expect lecture, class discussion, small-group work and peer review, and one-on-one meetings with the instructor.
GLOS 3985V - Honors Capstone Seminar [WI]
(3 cr; Prereq-dept consent; A-F only; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was GLOS 3550V until 19-JAN-21, was INTR 3550 until 05-SEP-00, GLOS 3981W (starting 20-JAN-15, was INTR 3981 until 05-SEP-00)
In the Honors Capstone Seminar, students will write a 25-30 page cum laude or magna cum laude honors thesis on a self-defined topic related to their thematic and/or regional concentration. The course is designed to support academic research and writing in an interdisciplinary field, and to provide students a space to synthesize what they have learned in the classroom, through study abroad, in internships, and from life experiences. Students can expect lecture, class discussion, small-group work and peer review, and one-on-one meetings with the instructor. Students interested in summa cum laude honors should not take this class; they should consult the Global Studies advisor.
GLOS 3993 - Directed Study
(1 cr [max 5]; Student Option; offered Every Fall, Spring & Summer; may be repeated for 12 credits; may be repeated 12 times)
Equivalent courses: was AREA 3993 until 05-SEP-00
Guided individual reading or study. Prereq instr consent, dept consent, college consent.
GLOS 4221 - Globalize This! Understanding Globalization Through Sociology [GP]
(3 cr; A-F or Audit; offered Periodic Spring)
Equivalent courses: SOC 4321 (starting 03-SEP-02)
From the city streets of Bangalore to the high plateaus of La Paz to the trading floors of New York City, people from around the world are becoming increasingly interdependent, creating new and revitalizing old forms of power and opportunity, exploitation and politics, social organizing and social justice. This course offers an overview of the processes that are forcing and encouraging people?s lives to intertwine economically, politically, and culturally. SOC majors/minors must register A-F.
GLOS 4311 - Power, Justice & the Environment [DSJ]
(3 cr; Prereq-SOC 1001 recommended; A-F or Audit; offered Periodic Spring)
Equivalent courses: SOC 4311 (starting 07-SEP-10)
This course introduces students to the theoretical and historical foundations of environmental racism and environmental inequality more broadly. We will examine and interrogate both the social scientific evidence concerning these phenomena and the efforts by community residents, activists, workers, and governments to combat it. We will consider the social forces that create environmental inequalities so that we may understand their causes, consequences, and the possibilities for achieving environmental justice
GLOS 4315 - Never Again! Memory & Politics after Genocide [GP]
(3 cr; Prereq-SOC 1001 or 1011V recommended, A-F required for Majors/Minors.; A-F or Audit; offered Spring Odd Year)
Equivalent courses: SOC 5315 (inactive), JWST 4315 (inactive), SOC 4315 (inactive), GLOS 5315 (inactive)
Course focuses on the social repercussions and political consequences of large-scale political violence, such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Students learn how communities and states balance the demands for justice and memory with the need for peace and reconciliation and addresses cases from around the globe and different historical settings.
GLOS 4344 - Europe and its Margins
(3 cr; Prereq-One course in [ANTH or GLOS]; A-F only; offered Every Fall)
Equivalent courses: ANTH 4344 (starting 02-SEP-08)
This course explores some of the forms of human imagining (literary, artistic, political, social scientific) engendered by the notoriously hard to define entity known as "Europe." It does so by focusing on regions and populations that have been thought of at various times as marking Europe's inner and outer cultural and/or geographical limits. Topics addressed include: the relationship between physical geography, cultural memory, and the formation (or subversion) of identity claims; the reconfigured political landscapes of post-socialism and European integration; immigration, refugee flows, and the rise of far-right ethno-nationalisms; and the effects of pandemics past and present.
GLOS 4461 - Sociology of Ethnic and Racial Conflict [DSJ]
(3 cr; A-F or Audit; offered Periodic Fall)
Equivalent courses: SOC 4461 (starting 17-MAY-21)
"I can't breathe." The last words of George Floyd. Words that traumatized a nation, and the world. While the death of George Floyd galvanized peoples worldwide to speak out against discrimination and inequality, well before his death studies suggested that ethnic and racial discrimination and conflict re-occur on an ongoing basis. From the events of the Holocaust - to the genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar - to the torture of Uighurs in China - to the Atlantic slave trade - we explore how identities are formed - and thereafter - how those same identities are deployed - to exclude and marginalize - with targeted precision. Across the world, we examine how racial bias and racial animus contribute to slavery, torture, mass displacement, economic destitution, and genocide.
GLOS 5315 - Never Again! Memory & Politics after Genocide [GP]
(3 cr; Prereq-SOC 1001 or 1011V recommended, A-F required for Majors/Minors.; A-F or Audit; offered Spring Odd Year)
Equivalent courses: GLOS 4315 (inactive), SOC 5315 (inactive), JWST 4315 (inactive), SOC 4315 (inactive)
Course focuses on the social repercussions and political consequences of large-scale political violence, such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Students learn how communities and states balance the demands for justice and memory with the need for peace and reconciliation and addresses cases from around the globe and different historical settings.
GLOS 5403 - Human Rights Advocacy
(3 cr; Prereq-Grad student; Student Option; offered Every Fall)
Theoretical basis of human rights movement. Organizations, strategies, tactics, programs. Advocacy: fact-finding, documentation, campaigns, trial observations. Forensic science. Human rights education, medical/psychological treatment. Research project or background for case study.
GLOS 5500 - Graduate Topics in Global Studies (Topics course)
(1 cr [max 4]; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 12 credits; may be repeated 3 times)
Topics specified in Class Schedule.
GLOS 5537 - Business and Human Rights [DSJ]
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: LAW 6637 (starting 05-SEP-17)
This seminar will explore the growing area of law and advocacy around business and human rights (BHR). The course will cover the following: 1) We will examine the development and content of international human rights standards pertaining to corporations and corporate officers, such as international, national, regional, and state laws including trafficking, due diligence, trade, finance, investment, and procurement laws and principles including the UN Guiding Principles on Human Rights and Business; 2) We will next focus on types of implementation and points of intervention on BHR issues: a) civil litigation, criminal prosecution, and voluntary grievance mechanisms, b) internal corporate policies, c) socially responsible investment shareholder advocacy and divestment, d) civil society reporting and documentation, and e) strengthening laws and international standard-setting mechanisms. To examine these questions, we will use case studies across various industries that focus on issues including supply chains and labor conditions, environmental practices, and violations by security forces employed by multinational corporations; 3) The readings and seminars will encourage students to explore the debates about the most effective ways for businesses to protect and advance respect for human rights, prevent violations, and provide redress to victims of violations that occur as a result of their actions/inaction and defend themselves when they are falsely accused; 4) A research paper due at the end of the semester will encourage students to integrate different arguments and course materials, conduct related independent research and develop their own arguments. We will use a combination of discussions, collaborative exercises, and conversations with guest speakers working in different aspects of business and human rights work.
GLOS 5611 - Stories, Bodies, Movements
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Periodic Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 6 credits)
Equivalent courses: GLOS 3611, GWSS 3611
For most of us, stories seem to simply 'happen.' We listen to stories, we tell stories, we are moved by stories, and we retell stories. However, every act of telling stories involves making decisions or moves, and each re-telling of a familiar story may either give birth to new meanings, nuances, and affects, or, it may erase their possibility. Thus, each storyteller can be seen as a translator of stories with a responsibility to retell stories ethically. It is precisely through these translational acts that all politics become politics of storytelling. In this course, we will consider the ways in which the politics of the global and the intimate derive their meanings, effects, and affects from the circulation, transaction, and re-tellings of stories within and across borders. We will ask how a praxis of ethical engagement with politics can be imagined as a praxis of receiving and retelling stories. By immersing ourselves in the process of remembering, telling, listening, trimming, interweaving, distilling, and performing stories, we will consider how ethical receiving and retelling of stories involves continuous revising, repositioning, and re-theorizing of such vexed and entangled terrains and terminologies as identity, community, rights, and justice, as well as the contingent meanings of knowledge, truth, and ethics. This course engages this terrain through a mode of active learning in which all the participants will read and reflect, listen and discuss, tell and retell, watch and play, move and perform collectively. By becoming aware of the ways in which our minds-bodies-souls are inserted in the receiving and translation of stories, we will grapple together with the ways in which our bodies--as our embodiments--help to relationally shape not only our own performances but also our responses to the performances of other living and moving bodies around us. We will learn from writings, film, songs, and plays by writers, artists, activists, and thinkers from a r
GLOS 5900 - Topics in Global Studies (Topics course)
(1 cr [max 4]; Student Option; offered Every Fall, Spring & Summer; may be repeated for 12 credits; may be repeated 3 times)
Equivalent courses: was INTR 5900 until 05-SEP-00
Proseminar. Selected issues in global studies. Topics specified in Class Schedule.
GLOS 5993 - Directed Studies
(1 cr [max 4]; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 12 credits; may be repeated 12 times)
Equivalent courses: was AREA 5993 until 05-SEP-00
Guided individual reading or study. Open to qualified students for one or more semesters.
GLOS 5994 - Directed Research
(1 cr [max 4]; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 12 credits; may be repeated 12 times)
Equivalent courses: was AREA 5994 until 05-SEP-00
Qualified students work on a tutorial basis. Prereq instr consent, dept consent, college consent.

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