From hblackme@liberty.uc.wlu.edu Wed May 19 10:57:06 1999
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 09:39:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Hugh A. Blackmer" 
To: WKlingelhofer@wlu.edu
Subject: Re: your mail

On Tue, 18 May 1999, William Klingelhofer wrote:

> Hugh,  
> 
> Anymore thoughts on your ideas concerning a Cultural Geography 
> offering in the curriculum -- would you like to make that a 
> 'proposal?'   I think it offers a lot of potential.
> 

My thoughts of the moment run in a slightly different direction, more
inclusive or maybe just more general.  Partly it's a matter of 

**what's realistically do-able in the W&L context, 

partly a matter of 

**a rubric grand enough to appeal to Mellon, 

and partly 

**my own analysis of what our students need to know but don't presently
have much opportunity to study

Taking those in order: anything that implies hiring of professors or
creation of departmental units is swimming against the currents of
rationality in our context, BUT "programs" which utilize existing
faculty and curricular resources (like Poverty, Environmental Studies) are
possible, especially when they have appeal to external agencies and/or
offer a General Education component.  So a Program that emphasizes
international dimensions may serve as a big tent for various initiatives
and projects --everything from curriculum development (interdisciplinary
courses) to film and concert and lecture series to Visiting Professorships
to internships to technology. But what is a really viable focus for such a
Program?

	Answer: Global Studies.

Mellon and other agencies are leery of "Area Studies" (see
http://www.jhu.edu/~igscph/trouillo.htm for an exposition) but there seems
to be a fair bit of active development in the realm of "Global Studies"
programs (a cache of links at
http://www.wlu.edu/~hblackme/interned/global.html is a start toward
plumbing this variety). 

I don't think there are all that many W&L courses that are now explicitly
global in scope, but I think a Global Studies Program could be assembled
from existing bits, drawing upon faculty interests and resources we have
or will soon acquire. The overarching point would be that Global
perspectives _are_ international (or more properly transnational)
perspectives, and that the global level of integration IS now something we
should be developing the means to teach, study, understand, communicate
about, gather and analyze data about, etc.  "Global" is certainly made up
of sub-global parts, so courses in, say Latin American history fit beneath
the rubric.

I'm not sure how much scheming energy to put into this, but it does seem
to me that we could propose to the Mellon folks that we want to explore
setting up a Program in Global Studies, to integrate existing courses and
competencies with the developing worlds of communication (video, internet,
telecom, etc) and data (satellite, GIS, economic, etc.) and to provide the
means and support for our students to venture into global (international)
arenas as interns, students, travelers, etc.

--Hugh