OBJECTIVES

The purpose of this project is to build on existing work on the Rutgers Camden campus and beyond to explore opportunities for interdisciplinary research collaboration across the humanities and social sciences in the area of global studies.

Global studies is growing scholarly field but one that remains significantly siloed within isolated disciplines and more prominent in the social sciences than in the humanities. What is more, global studies is sometimes reduced to studies of international phenomena, rather than studies of any kind of phenomena through a specifically globalized lens. Yet in today’s world it is increasingly difficult to understand politics, literature, history, language, justice, media, gender, religion, and most subjects studied by academics without also understanding the ways in which today’s world is increasingly interconnected and interdependent. What is more, an interdisciplinary globalized lens is needed for examining pressing global issues such as climate change, transnational corporate power (“McDonaldsization”), political and cultural nativism, rising religious factionalism, the transnational influence of mass media, the worldwide digital divide, and much more.

The project is directed by John Wall (PI), along with co-PIs Sarada Balagopalan (Childhood Studies), a scholar of postcolonial childhoods; Carla Giaudrone (Latin American and Latino Studies), an expert in gender and queer studies and trans-national territorial identity in Latin America; Rafey Habib (English), a literary theorist, poet, and translator of the Qur’an; Jean-Louis Hippolyte (French), a scholar of contemporary French literature and culture in the world; and Harry Rhea (Sociology), an expert in international human rights and humanitarian law.

ACTIVITIES

The project’s work consists in a series of workshops, conferences, and publications over a two-year period from January 2017 to December 2018. The project also plans to build institutional structures to keep these conversations going, such as a potential Global Studies Center as well undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs addressing globalization themes.

Activities planned so far include the following:

  • Global Studies Roundtable, February 20, 2017 – See program here
  • Defining Global Studies Workshop, May 22, 2017 – See program here
  • Globalization and Literacy Workshop, Fall 2017
  • Globalization and Justice Workshop, Fall 2017
  • Further workshops, talks, and discussions, Spring 2018
  • Reimagining Global Studies Conference, Fall 2018

Eventual outcomes include the following:

  • Reimagining Global Studies, co-edited volume, anticipated publication 2019
  • Global Studies Research Center, Rutgers University Camden, in planning stages
  • Coordination with Rutgers Camden’s Global Studies Joint BA Program, starting Fall 2017
  • Coordination with Rutgers University’s proposed School of Global Studies