Class Schedules

How has the experience of globalization been shaped, defined, and complicated by media? This course centers the role of media and media technologies in exploring how collectivities are formed, differences articulated, and encounters negotiated in an (unevenly) interconnected world. Today we tend to associate globalization with digital media, but from the newspaper reports of foreign correspondents to portrayals of cultural identity on soap operas and sitcoms, media have long informed understandings of the world and our varied places in it. Thinking about, through, and with media artifacts across a range of geographic contexts, we examine and interrogate dynamics of global exchange. Prerequisite(s): Open to first- and second- year students, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

How has the experience of globalization been shaped, defined, and complicated by media? This course centers the role of media and media technologies in exploring how collectivities are formed, differences articulated, and encounters negotiated in an (unevenly) interconnected world. Today we tend to associate globalization with digital media, but from the newspaper reports of foreign correspondents to portrayals of cultural identity on soap operas and sitcoms, media have long informed understandings of the world and our varied places in it. Thinking about, through, and with media artifacts across a range of geographic contexts, we examine and interrogate dynamics of global exchange. Prerequisite(s): Open to first- and second- year students, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In the early days of the internet, many people predicted that the increased speed and scale of communications would make for a more homogenous world. Now, decades later, we see something different: a proliferation of cross-fertilizing cultures, sub-cultures, and counter-cultures online. This course explores some of this rich variety, studying online social worlds (from influencers to hacktivists) and the ways in which IT-informed ways of being seep into social life offline (from ideologies of innovation to algorithmic oppression). Critically deploying the concept of culture and the tools of ethnography to understand these emergent formations, this course will pay particular attention to difference and power while situating "the digital" in international context.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Against the swirling backdrop of political discourses about women in the Islamic world, this course will engage with feminist and postcolonial debates through literary works by Muslim women writers. The course will begin with an exploration of key debates about women's agency and freedom, the Islamic headscarf, and Qur'anic hermeneutics. With this in mind, we will turn to the fine details of literature and poetry by Muslim women. How do these authors constitute their worlds? How are gendered subjectivities constructed? And how do the gender politics of literary texts relate to the broader political and historical contexts from which they emerge? Themes will include an introduction to Muslim poetesses and Arabic poetic genres, the rise of the novel in the Arabic speaking world, and Muslim women's literary production outside of the Middle East: from Senegal to South Asia, and beyond.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

When communication takes place across language barriers, it raises fundamental questions about meaning, style, power relationships, and traditions. This course treats literary translation as a particularly complex form of cross-cultural interaction. Students will work on their own translations of prose or poetry while considering broader questions of translation, through critiques of existing translations, close comparisons of variant translations, and readings on cultural and theoretical aspects of literary translation. Prerequisite(s): Advanced proficiency in a second language.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course introduces and explores the major health problems facing developing countries, and the main approaches to remediation. The course considers the social determinants of health, and the need for public health programs to address the root causes of health inequities as well as illness itself. Focus is at the country, international-organization, and donor levels. Attention will be given to major indicators, recent trends, policies, and metrics for monitoring progress. A case study, such as international tuberculosis control, will be used as an applied analysis.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course introduces and explores the major health problems facing developing countries, and the main approaches to remediation. The course considers the social determinants of health, and the need for public health programs to address the root causes of health inequities as well as illness itself. Focus is at the country, international-organization, and donor levels. Attention will be given to major indicators, recent trends, policies, and metrics for monitoring progress. A case study, such as international tuberculosis control, will be used as an applied analysis.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course explores ethnic nationalism's causes and consequences in Eastern Europe. Drawing on several disciplines, we begin by examining the core concepts and theories in the contemporary study of nationalism. We then explore both the historical roots of Eastern European nationalisms, and their implications for democracy, minority inclusion, regional stability, and European integration.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Food has been a global issue for over half a millennium. The intercontinental movement of potatoes, sugar, rice, tobacco and more has shaped populations, economies, empires, and environments, while food today inflects the worldwide experience of nationality, ethnicity, religion, health, gender, race, class, culture, rights, and indeed life. Thus this course explores global food from many disciplinary, geographical, and thematic perspectives. We will also interact with local food institutions, address in a limited way our own food practices, and cook and eat a bit too.Al

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Since its “discovery” by Europeans in the 15th century, America has occupied a uniquely ambivalent place in the imagination of Europeans: as a window onto its own future, and as its backward and uncouth child; as a vindicator of human dignity, and as a warning example of democracy’s worst outgrowths. In this new course, we will trace the “New World” in the geographical, sociological, politological, literary, and cinematic imagination of Europe since the advent of European colonization. The focus will be on the unique transnational entanglements that have joined Europe to its uncannily similar other since the early modern era and continue to do so today. Discussion topics include: “first contact”; mapping the new continent; cannibalism and the Eucharist; premodern anticolonialism; romanticism’s love/hate relationship to the US; democracy and the tyranny of the majority; European antiracism and its hypocrisies; “Indianthusiasm” and the politics of cultural appropriation; critical theory moves to California or “Frankfurt Goes L.A.”; European émigrés’ role in the US denazification program; re-education movies in post-war Germany; Kafka’s "America" in text and film; current perceptions of fascism rising in the US. Readings by Hans Staden, Michel de Montaigne, J.G. Herder, Alexander von Humboldt, G.F.W. Hegel, W. v. Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Alexis de Tocqueville, W.E.B. Du Bois, Max Weber, Erik Erikson, T.W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka; films by Leslie Fenton, Jacques Tourneur, J.-M. Straub and D. Huillet. Weekly reading responses, participation in a group presentation, two short papers, one 10-page final project. Counts as elective for the Critical Theory Concentration.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In a notable turn around, a significant number of African societies, in recent years, have experienced both economic growth and renewal of the spirit of women and men acting as citizens. These are commendable achievements. Yet, old quotidian urgencies such as precarious personal safety, hunger, poor health, and political disorder are still prevalent. This is the dialectic of development. This course explores these contradictions. Most of the attention will be given to the concepts of power, politics, and development in contemporary Africa. The course concludes with each student submitting a research paper on a specific problem (e.g. environment, economic, social, cultural, political) confronting one country of the student's choice. Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course explores the rapidly evolving field of transitional justice, examining how and why regimes respond to wide-scale past human rights abuses. Drawing on examples worldwide, it asks why states choose particular strategies and examines a variety of goals (truth, justice, reconciliation, democracy-building), approaches (trials, truth commissions, file access, memorialization, reparation, rewriting histories), actors (state, civil society, religious institutions), experiences, results, and controversies. Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Leadership is among the deepest features of associational life, pervading every profession and institution, especially in the age of complex global change. Thus this seminar explores leadership. We begin with the relationship between structure and agency, and then focus on vision and invention, integrity and legitimacy, flexibility and decisiveness. Readings draw from Western, Islamic, and Indian sources. The main paper will focus on a major individual from any century or locale, chosen by the student. Prerequisite(s): Open to all but first year students.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

For more than a century, many fine minds - St. Lucian poets, Russian linguists, Mexican mystics, German forest historians, American sociologists, Bengali novelists, and Macalester International Studies students among them - have been drawn to thinking on a world scale. This senior seminar begins by reading some of them at essay length, then tackles current world-scale books the instructor himself has not yet read. Finally we generate some world-scale writing of our own. Open to all geographies and disciplinary specialties. Corequisite(s): Senior standing or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Globalization is upon us, resulting in unprecedented cultural interpenetration and civilizational encounter. Most of what animates this condition is old. However, the contemporary velocity, reach, and mutations of these forces suggest a new "world time," full of contradictions, perils, and promises. This course introduces students to globalization by asking What is globalization, and how does one study it? What are the principal forces (social groups, ideas, institutions, and ecological circumstances) that shaped and now propel it? What are its concrete consequences, and how are we to respond? Open to first- and second-year students, or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

One of the most significant trends of the current era has been globalization: the shrinking of distances, the greater interpenetration of the world's peoples, and the rise, perhaps, of a so-called global culture. Yet it is too simple to say, "it's all a big mix," for the questions of how the mixing is done, and who mixes, are complex. The study of literature illuminates these questions. By reading important recent texts, this course tackles "world" questions: what does it mean to be from a certain place? what is a culture? and who are we in it? We'll work to link our own personal readings with the texts in dialogue with the world. Texts will be drawn from U.S. multicultural, "world," and travel literature, and rich theoretical readings. Open to first- and second-year students, or permission of the instructor. Prerequisite(s): Open only to First Year students and rising sophomores.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

How has the experience of globalization been shaped, defined, and complicated by media? This course centers the role of media and media technologies in exploring how collectivities are formed, differences articulated, and encounters negotiated in an (unevenly) interconnected world. Today we tend to associate globalization with digital media, but from the newspaper reports of foreign correspondents to portrayals of cultural identity on soap operas and sitcoms, media have long informed understandings of the world and our varied places in it. Thinking about, through, and with media artifacts across a range of geographic contexts, we examine and interrogate dynamics of global exchange. Prerequisite(s): Open to first- and second- year students, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Open to first- and second-year students. This course develops a base of knowledge, concepts, and analytical skills for engaging with International Studies' multi-dimensional concerns. Ranging across disciplines but with an emphasis on social science, we study global theories of interaction and conflict between human groups and explore sites and implications of increasing encounter. Focusing on culture, people flows, nationalism and ethnicity, democratization, contending interests, security, religious fundamentalism, gender, and modes of community integration, we examine how particular cases reflect broader processes. Open to first- and second-year students, or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course will examine the developments of contemporary art beyond traditional centers of gravity in Europe and the United States. Using a series of case studies, it will examine how globalization impacts artistic production in different parts of the world, including Asia, Africa, India, Latin America, Russia, Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. While analyzing a diverse range of artistic practices in these regions, the course will critically explore key discourses around the topic of globalization, including hybridity and diaspora, from post-modern and post-colonial perspectives. No background in art history necessary.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

Infrastructure is infamously boring - as sociologist Susan Leigh Star once put it, 'infrastructure' is the term we give "the forgotten, the backgrounded, the frozen in place." But as events of recent years have demonstrated - from the pipeline protests at Standing Rock, to Russian hacks on U.S. power grids, to concerns over Chinese construction in the Global South - infrastructure is a political project of vital importance. Infrastructure is a site where hopes and dreams are invested. It is also a place where unequal influence is laid bare. In this course we will consider infrastructure's technical politics, tracing water pipes and railway networks; interstate highways and fiber-optic lines. Through close attention to the making, maintenance, and end-user experience of these systems, we will practice reading the politics built into our built environments. Students in this course will learn theoretical frameworks and practice methodologies for studying infrastructure in social context at transnational, national, and local scales.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course offers a theoretical and practical introduction to the study and promotion of human rights. Using broad materials, it focuses on the evolution and definition of key concepts, the debate over "universal" rights, regional and international institutions, core documents, the role of states, and current topics of interest to the human rights movement.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Russia presents an excellent case study for the topic of political violence. Terrorism as a means of political persuasion originated in the land of the tsars; Russian history features an incendiary cycle of repressions, revolts, and reprisals. Studying the origins and depictions of these events in works of art reveals how culture mediates between the world of ideas and the sphere of action. We will consider the tactics and motives of revolutionary conspirators as well as the role that gender and religion played in specific acts of terror. We will explore the ways in which Russian revolutionary thought and action served as a model for radicals around the world. The Russian case will provide a framework for in-depth study of examples of terrorism from Algeria, Ireland, Germany, the U.S., and the Middle East. Texts will include novels, poems, manifestos, letters, journalistic accounts, and films, as well as readings in cultural history and political theory. Taught in English.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to Middle Eastern history, politics, and cultural life through the lens of film. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the development of both local and regional cinematic traditions; the role of film in the production of collective memory of conflict and war; techniques and visual rhetorics of ethnographic film; and the power relations inherent in the cinematic gaze. Readings will offer an introduction to methods of film analysis as well as to the political and artistic history of the modern Middle East.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course introduces and explores the major health problems facing developing countries, and the main approaches to remediation. The course considers the social determinants of health, and the need for public health programs to address the root causes of health inequities as well as illness itself. Focus is at the country, international-organization, and donor levels. Attention will be given to major indicators, recent trends, policies, and metrics for monitoring progress. A case study, such as international tuberculosis control, will be used as an applied analysis.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The sudden recent rise of LLM-based artificial intelligence (AI), notably but not only ChatGPT, is having deep sociocultural, political, economic, and educational effects. In this course we will think about, and with, AI in a global frame. After asking “what is AI?” and reviewing its history, we will explore AI topics including environment, labor, higher education, cognitive surrender, consciousness, personhood, recursivity, hallucination, geopolitics, warfare, alignment, existential risk, the post-Mac professions, and AI in film and literature. Rather than keep AI at a distance, we’ll work with it: carefully, skeptically, critically, together. But often we’ll avoid screens altogether.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course considers surveillance as a social formation, inseparable from the theory and exercise of power. On the one hand, it takes up the pressing questions surveillance raises, from the development of cutting-edge technologies to the complex work of international regulation. On the other hand, it situates surveillance historically as central to projects of imperial conquest, state formation, and colonial rule. Engaging with theoretical works, primary sources, empirical studies and artistic renderings, students will grapple with problems of surveillance and power across geographic and historical contexts.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Traces the development of theoretical accounts of culture, politics and identity in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and related lands since the 1947-1991 decolonizations. Readings include Fanon, Said, Walcott, Ngugi and many others, and extend to gender, literature, the U.S., the post-Soviet sphere, and Europe. The course bridges cultural, representational, and political theory. Prerequisite(s): Prior internationalist and/or theoretical coursework strongly recommended.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Capitalism, for many, is synonymous with the "natural" exchange of goods and services through "the free market." But fuller examination shows capitalism to be neither natural, free, nor limited to economic transactions. Capitalism more precisely is a historical social system and a way of being which now penetrates all forms of life: cultural, ecological, civic and more. This senior seminar aims to identify capitalism's origins and development, and interrogate its contemporary status. Thinkers such as Smith, Marx, and Braudel will loom, but readings will focus on works by Beaud, Weber, Tawney, Kotz, Wallerstein, and others. The course concludes with a significant research paper on a topic, relevant to the theme, of a student's choice. Prerequisite(s): Senior standing or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials