IGS has about 44 classes cross-listed this semester, but a few are completely new and have limited seats. Don’t let these fill up before you get a spot!
This year we’re offering the first ever Comp Lit/IGS collaboration, a literary voyage across the Mediterranean. COML/IGS 125B: The “Sea-Between-Lands,” looks at the cultures along the sea’s shores and all interplay, back and forth, between Europe, the Middle East and Africa. You’ll study literature and film from the Francophone world (in translation) including some classics but also plenty of the sharpest writers from Greece, Lebanon, Morocco and, of course, France’s south coast.
Pardon my bias toward the humanities, but this is a great way to get a sense of a place — and what a place to understand! The “sea of monotheisms,” the waters that people have been navigating from Homer to today’s Syrian refugees. And what a professor! If you’ve met Clementine Faure-Bellaiche, you probably already have a sense how warm and bright she is. But you might not yet have seen just how incredibly knowledgeable and interesting she is too. She’s a graduate of the very top of the French academic world and is just amazing to talk to. If I could take one IGS class this spring, this would be it.
COML/IGS 125B meets in Block K: M,W 2:00 PM–3:20 PM. There are only 18 slots, so sign up quick if you’re interested!
The Mediterranean always interests me simply because for some societies, its shores were the whole world. But of course today the international is truly global, which makes this pairing of new courses especially relevant.
On the one hand you have POL 163A: Creating World Order, to be taught by Politics professor Kerry Chase. This is a course that takes you right into the minds of the people who built the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank — all born from the wreckage of World War II and created in search of a safer, more prosperous and just world. In a time when those institutions are often called outdated or even destructive, it’s worth seeing how they were built in the first place.
POL 163A: Creating World Order meets in block S2: T 2:00 PM–4:50 PM. Again, it’s limited — just 20 seats — so if you’re interested, get it quick!
At the other end of that you’ve got my own class, SOC 146B Nationalism and Globalization, which is a look at how that global order might now be coming apart. I have been struck that, while we live in a global age, nationalism also seems to be resurgent — from Russia to China, India to Europe and yes, even here, with Donald Trump.
Is there something about globalization that sparks nationalism? Are these opposites, or two sides of the same coin? We’ll also look at these cases but also places with other identities, whether the “post-national” European Union or cosmopolitan Hong Kong.
This class is for juniors, seniors and grad students and only has 15 seats! It meets in Block H: T,F 11:00 AM–12:20 PM.
Finally, we’re opening up GS 202B, Critical Global Issues, to a few select seniors this fall. This is a rare chance to take a graduate class, taught by Dr. Kristen Lucken, the director of our MA program, that offers hands-on training in how to build and evaluate an NGO, how professionals are handling the migration crisis — you’ll have exposure to real methods and real people from the field. We don’t usually let this class get bigger than 10, so add it quickly if you want it. GS 202B meets in BlockS3: W 2:00 PM–4:50 PM.
If you have other suggestions, please add them in the comments below. And happy hunting!