GLOS 3143 is also offered in Fall 2023
GLOS 3143 is also offered in Spring 2022
Spring 2017 | GLOS 3143 Section 001: Living in the Global (52343)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- A-F only
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
UMNTC Liberal Education Requirement
- Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
Tue,
Thu 02:30PM - 03:45PM
UMTC, West Bank
Blegen Hall 125
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Contemporary condition of global connectedness. Ways our habits, tastes, and experiences involve a stream of encounters with the global. Terrains of interconnection, including tourism, music, the Internet, and mass culture.
- Class Description:
- This course is a small, upper-level seminar that begins with a simple enough question: how do we think of ourselves as inhabiting a 'globe,' as experiencing something 'global'? It is safe to say that a century ago, the average person was much less aware that they inhabited a ball whose surface was covered with an unthinkable amount of both human and non-human diversity. Today, by contrast, every publication seems to proclaim it; we are incessantly reminded of globalization, even as there is no consensus as to what this process really is. Not paying attention to globalization is tantamount to being left behind by the wave of supposedly global advance. But what is really involved with living lives in which we are present to the world in ever new ways? The course is based on one main assumption: that 'living in the global' presents problems of understanding, problems that have no easy answers, or perhaps no answers at all. Therefore the course has one main goal: to explore the nature of our current understanding of being both a witness to the global, of being a producer of knowledge about the global, and of experiencing the global in both mundane and profound ways. A central feature of the course is that it gives you the space to reflect on your own education. There is no bounded body of knowledge that I am teaching you; there is no content that I will test you on. The only goal is to end the class a different person than when you started it. This 'becoming a different person' is in one sense obvious; time passes and we can't help but to change as things happen to us. But the kind of change we will discuss is different; it comes from cultivating a more observant, more curious, more inquisitive, and more sensitive orientation to one's world. There is no textbook for this, no foolproof series of steps that will bring this about. It is about adding a new capacity to the resources that one brings to life. We will examine topics that include the collapsing of time and space, religious framings of human problems, cosmopolitan understanding, and social and political activism.
- Grading:
- 40% Journal
20% Reflection Papers
20% In-class Presentations
20% Class Participation
- Class Format:
- 10% Lecture
40% Discussion
40% Small Group Activities
10% Student Presentations
- Workload:
- 100 Pages Reading Per Week
25 Pages Writing Per Term
2 Presentation(s)
Other Workload: Writing will consist primarily of journaling and moodle posts.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/52343/1173
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 5 November 2009
ClassInfo Links - Spring 2017 Global Studies Classes