GLOS3143

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.