Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Institute for Global Studies

The Institute for Global Studies (GLS) at Hobart and William Smith brings together eight HWS departments and programs and more than 25% of the HWS full-time faculty. The Institute supports faculty collaboration on teaching and research while enhancing students’ academic experience. Through its shared cohort course offerings, Global Studies strengthens the many points of contact among participating faculty and introduces students to a breadth of approaches to studying the global. The Institute for Global Studies builds on the many well-established strengths of HWS, from its historic dedication to interdisciplinarity and collaboration, to its award-winning Center for Global Education. Programming promotes a broad outlook for students to pursue lives of consequence writ large across the globe. Global Studies gives students a carefully guided academic experience, leaving them well-positioned for graduate study and professional opportunities that increasingly require global perspectives.

Contributing programs:
Africana Studies
Anthropology
Asian Studies
European Studies
French Francophone, and Italian Studies
German Studies
International Relations
Russian Area Studies

Council of Directors

The heart of the Institute for Global Studies administrative structure is the Council of Directors, led by a director. Each of the contributing programs have representation on the Council but remain autonomous entities within the Institute. 

Institute for Global Studies Council Members:
Jeff Anderson, Professor of Anthropology, Director
Chris Annear, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Kanaté Dahouda, Professor of French, Francophone, and Italian Studies
Kevin Dunn, Professor of International Relations
David Galloway, Associate Professor of Ancient and Modern Languages 
Scott MacPhail,  Director, Fellowships and Health Professions Advising
Michael Tinkler, Associate Professor of Art and Architecture
Courtney Wells, Professor of French, Francophone, and Italian Studies
Kristen Welsh, Dean of Global Education
Vikash Yadav, Professor of International Relations

Offerings

The Global Studies minor offers students an opportunity for interdisciplinary study of culture and language in an increasingly interconnected and multicultural world. Taking as its core intellectual principle that deep understandings of culture and language require comparative analysis, the minor provides students with an assemblage of cross-cultural perspectives that will enrich their academic experience with preparation for critical thinking, engaged communication, and informed problem-solving in and among the diverse and changing human communities in the world today.

Global Studies in Culture Minor
interdisciplinary, 7 courses
Learning Objectives:

• Show understanding of different cultural perspectives by reading, writing, and speaking about culturally authentic material reflecting lived experiences from a variety of different social and historical contexts. 
• Demonstrate engagement with foundational global topics – migration, imperialism and colonialism, nationalism, and globalization –  by working to improve the frequency and quality of their written and oral work. 
• Locate sites of inequity and interdependence, reflecting the many ways in which relations of power shape lives, ideas, and identities at global and local scales.  
• Identify and evaluate the normative logics guiding the creation, implementation, and maintenance of global cultural practices

Requirements:
For this minor, students take GLS 101, the introductory course to Global Studies, followed by either GLS 201 or GLS 202, which will challenge them to apply their studies to the analysis and application of methods and theories for understanding linguistic and cultural connections, processes, issues, and modes of creativity through a global lens. In addition to these two core courses, all students enrolled in the minor must take at least one class in a global language at HWS and take two classes in each of two distinct global topics or regional areas in consultation with their advisor. Many courses in contributing programs and departments can count as electives or core courses for the minor. Students should check with their advisor for details.

Area and Topic Elective Courses:
AFS 150 Foundations of Africana Studies
AFS 180 Black Atlantic
AFS 208 Growing Up Black (AL)
AFS 220 Arabic Cinema and Literature
AFS 235 Healer and Humanist: Frantz Fanon the Revolutionary
AFS 305 Revolutionary African American Autobiography (AL)
ANTH 217 Precolonial Africa
ANTH 222 Native American Religions
ANTH 225 China in Africa
ANTH 282 North American Indians
ANTH 296 Africa: Beyond Crisis, Poverty &Aid
ANTH 298 Modern Japan
ASN 101 Trekking through Asia
ASN 102 Ottoman Worlds
ASN 103 Introduction to Asian Art
ASN 110 Himalayan Challenges
ASN 115 Imagining Asian Religion/s
ASN 120 Making of the Samurai
ASN 125 Japan: Supernatural Beings
ASN 201 Technology, Society, and Science Fiction from China and Beyond
ASN 211 Buddhism
ASN 212 Confucianism, Marxism, and Chinese Women
ASN 222 Arabic Cinema and Literature
ASN 236 Cultural Dynamics in China and Taiwan
ASN 242 Riding with Genghis Khan
ASN 247 Global Technology and Society
ASN 268 China’s Path to Global Hegemony
ASN 296 The U.S. and China
ASN 305 Showa through the Silver Screen
ASN 342 Seminar: Chinese Cinema & Global Issues
ASN 372 Global Technology and Society
ASN 373 Darwinian World
ASN 401 Asia Colloquium
BIDS 208-01 Fermenting in the Finger Lakes: Wine, Labor & Place [includes BIDS 208-11 lab]
EUST 101 Foundations of European Studies I: Antiquity to the Renaissance 
FRNE 155 Exile and Identity in Francophone Caribbean Fiction
FRN 241 Prises De Vue: Introduction to Contemporary France
FRN 242 Introduction to Quebec Studies
FRNE 220 Arabic Cinema and Literature
FRN 243 Topics in Francophone Cultures
FRN 244 Le Midi de la France
FRN 251 Introduction to French Literature I: Mystics, Friends and Lovers
FRN 253 Introduction to French and Francophone Literatures III: Paris-Outre-mer
FRN 256 America in the Francophone Imaginary
FRN 351 Francophone African Fiction
GERE 104 German Film
GERE 206 Madness and Mayhem in Modernity
GERE 208 Guilt and Punishment in German Literature
GERE 214 Berlin: A Cultural Biography
GLS 140 Ukrainian Easter Eggs
GLS 203 Eat Like a Slav
GLS 237 Russian Folklore
INRL 208 Gender and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa
INRL 216 Politics of Irish Cultural Production
INRL 243 Mysteries of Eastern Europe
INRL 245 Politics of the New Europe
INRL 250 Latin American Politics
INRL 258 State, Society, and Market in the Middle East and North Africa
INRL 259 African Politics
INRL 285 Borders, Belonging, and Rights in the Middle East and North Africa
INRL 281 International Relations of South Asia
INRL 301 International Relations of India
INRL 305 International Relations of China
ITAE 204 Italian Cinema 
RUSE 101 Blood and Ice: Russian Empires
RUSE 204 Russian Film 1917-2001
RUSE 206 America through Russian Eyes

Course Descriptions

GLS 101 Introduction to Global Studies  This gateway course is designed as an introduction to ways of understanding "the global" in the 21st century. As a course designed collaboratively by faculty from across the Institute of Global Studies, students will encounter diverse tools and ways of knowing drawn from the humanities and social sciences as they learn to think across time and space about questions of concern in our shared world. These may include questions of how and why people join with others to form community, what different forms of belonging mean and do, and how these relate to institutions and systems of power. The substantive questions and themes will vary by section, but the course's focus on interdisciplinary tools and ways of knowing will prepare students to engage in more advanced coursework across the various departments and programs in the Institute of Global Studies. Offered each semester. 

GLS 120 Sport and Ideology: Gender, Race, National Identity  This course examines the intersection of ideology and sport in multiple forms. Beginning with a broad introduction to the major issues in the application of questions regarding gender, race, class, and ideology to sport, we will primarily view sport as ideological struggle through the 20th century Olympic games movement and the contest between the Soviet and Eastern Bloc nations and the U.S., though we will also consider the larger context of sport as a window to social issues. We will use a variety of primary materials, including monographs, articles, interviews, documentaries, and feature films. P3 [Prerequisite: GLS 101 or permission of instructor]

GLS 140 Ukrainian Easter Eggs  Since before the advent of Christianity, Eastern Europeans have been decorating chickens' eggs to serve as magical protection for all aspects of their lives, continuing even after these pagan symbols were co-opted into the Easter tradition. We will learn the practical methods for making pysanky (decorated eggs) using the wax-resist technique, as well as the folkloric background of this tradition. Part of our emphasis will be on the tension between the Ukrainian diaspora's attitudes towards pysanky and ethnologist's desire to see this folk art continue uncorrupted, which echoes in decisions we make about our own artistic work. (Galloway, offered annually) P2 [Prerequisite: GLS 101 or permission of instructor]

GLS 201 Global Cultural Literacies  Global Cultural Literacies will examine cultural productions from around the world and the social/political/cultural forces that help shape world literature, such as socialism, anarchism, feminism, capitalism, migration, and various aesthetic movements. Students will develop an understanding of how cultural artifacts demonstrate and influence the production of meaning and worldviews. The course will present terms and techniques necessary for conducting literary analysis and offer insight into the fundamentals of language learning in languages other than English. This course is taught by faculty from various Global Language departments. Students need either the prerequisite or the co-requisite to enroll. (Offered annually)  [Prerequisite: Students must have completed one global language course or be currently enrolled in one global language course.]

GLS 202 Writing the World: Creative Writing from Global Inspiration  This course is an introductory course in creative writing, taking as inspiration numerous examples of fiction and poetry which have arisen in multiple cultures outside the US mainstream. Students will read a variety of African, Asian, European, South American, and North American Indigenous literary works for analysis and inspiration, then create their own writing for critique in workshop format. No prerequisites; all works are read in English translation. (Galloway, offered annually) P2 [Prerequisite: GLS 101 or permission of instructor]

GLS 203 Eat Like a Slav: Russian Culture through Food  In this course, we will investigate the role that food plays in Russian culture from its earliest documented forms to the present day. We will consider a variety of interdisciplinary contexts in which food takes a central role, including literature, economics, history, nutrition, and folklore, as well as the ways Russian food has been presented to the world at large. We will examine the peasant diet, which for hundreds of years supported a massive political empire, as well as the luxurious habits of the upper classes, where Western European influences first took hold. Our work will find its practical application in a kitchen laboratory session where we will construct these dishes as we discuss the nature of food in Russian culture of the last several hundred years. (Galloway, offered annually) P3 [Prerequisite: GLS 101 or permission of instructor]