Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

This course surveys the diverse ways people have fashioned identities and social relations that do not easily conform to the boundaries of nation-states. Explores how, in the context of transnational movements of people and ideas, individuals and communities construct and contest new identities, aspirations, and forms of belonging. Breadth-Humanities/Social Sciences.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course surveys the diverse ways people have fashioned identities and social relations that do not easily conform to a state-centric model of the world.   In this course, we will explore many different ways that people have forged and resisted connections, including through: the international migration of people, ideas, and things; the construction of identities through us/other distinctions; the persistence and controversy of ethnic identities; changing modes of exchange and the diffusion of particular forms of power and inequality; and the ways that ideas and practices of the nation-state and nationalism have been stimulated to accommodate or contest transnational identities and practices. Such themes have long and varied histories, of course, but they are all also extremely pertinent to the current moment in international and domestic politics, economics, and societies.      The course will strengthen students’ abilities to think in broader and more critical ways about how and why our world and people’s lives are organized in particular ways and with particular kinds of implications. It will provide a strong foundation for future scholarship related to: international migration and diaspora studies; multiculturalism; globalized rights movements, criminal networks, and cultural commodification; structural inequality; and the changing dynamics of nationalism.  

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: