Global Studies

Global Studies

FedEx Global Education Center
301 Pittsboro Street, CB# 3263
(919) 962-5442

First Session, 2024

GLBL 487 Social Movements: Rethinking Globalization (3)

MAYMESTER: This course explores the history, objectives, and manifestations of global social movements.
Specifically, we explore what it means to be an effective “global” social movement in the 21st century. Beginning with the “movement of movements,” which includes the anti-corporate globalization protests of the 1990s, the Zapatista movement, and many others, we look at the history, causes, objectives and myriad manifestations of movement and resistance, instantiations and possibilities. Based around key examples as well as local projects and groups, this course will investigate what it means to be a global social movement, what pursuing an alternative global agenda looks like, as well as what social change in the 21st century means. In addition to concrete cases, we will look at the various theories and spatial imaginaries underlying different movement practices and visions— often reading literature produced by and for movements. The course will also include some emphasis on research methods, ethics, and practices.

GLBL 210 Global Issues and Globalization (3)

Survey of international social, political, and cultural patterns in selected societies of Africa, Asia, America, and Europe, stressing comparative analysis of conflicts and change in different historical contexts
This course provides an introduction to the evolving field of global studies with a specific focus on the theme of globalization. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the intellectual, political, economic, and cultural issues that have marked the historical dynamics of globalization. We will examine various aspects of global economic, political, and cultural processes, including: the formation of a world of nation-states; the emergence of markets and construction of a global economy; conceptions and consequences of “development”; and issues and understandings of identities and norms. We will draw on the scholarly literature of the social sciences, film accounts of lived experiences within the modern global system, and mainstream media accounts of these issues. The course will unfold on two levels: (1) an account of changing social relations within increasingly transnational economic, political, and cultural systems, and (2) introduction of and critical reflections on the terms and categories that are used to describe these relations. No recitations in summer section of GLBL 210.

Second Session, 2024

No course offerings.