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