Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Institute for Global Studies

The Institute for Global Studies (GLS) at Hobart and William Smith Colleges brings together nine HWS departments and programs and more than 25% of the Colleges’ full-time faculty. The Institute supports faculty collaboration on teaching and research while enhancing students’ academic experience. Through its shared cohort courses, 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 – 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.

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. A Fellowship Advisor and a representative from the Center for Global Education are ex officio members.

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

Curricular Structure

Global Studies currently offers two levels of cohort courses. These courses count as electives or core courses in Global Studies member departments and programs; students should check with their advisor for details.

Offerings

The Institute for Global Studies offers a Global Studies in Culture minor which introduces students to the comparative study of cultures around the world. Taking as its core intellectual principle that cultural study is at its root comparative, the Global Studies in Culture minor encourages students to see how cross-cultural study enriches the academic experience by demonstrating the global nature of culture itself: a stronger understanding of Arabic, for example, is fundamental to analyses of Francophone film in Northern Africa; a knowledge of Spanish is crucial to understanding the African diaspora in North America; the study of Italian sheds light on cultural practices in global communities of Italian origin (in Argentina, Brazil, or the United States, for example).

Global Studies in Culture Minor

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:
One introductory course to Global Studies, one GLS course at the 200 level that challenge the student to apply their studies to the analysis and/or creation of cultural artifacts; one course in a global language at HWS; and four courses in which the student studies two distinct Global topics or regional areas in consultation with their advisor.

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. [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) [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. [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 weekly 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) [Prerequisite: GLS 101 or permission of instructor.]