This two-semester course explores the challenges of understanding the global world in which we live, a world that demands new conceptual approaches and ways of thinking. The objectives are to explore the various methodologies and approaches that Committee on Global Thought faculty apply to their scholarship on pressing global issues, and to confront the challenges of conducting research across local, regional, and global scales. This will take place through multi-week modules that center on a critical issue, asking students to familiarize themselves with key questions and context, engage with an expert on the topic, and apply their insights to a specific case or question.

The skills and assignments developed in MA Seminar will support students in the research and completion of their 10,000-word MA essays, which they will present to each other and to CGT faculty at the Spring Symposium of their final semester. 

All art is political, but some art is made as a form of protest or to incite an audience to protest. Most often it is both. This course—though far from exhaustive in its coverage—will present a sample of genres (music, plastic arts, theater, dance, installation, photography) in a variety of locations and times to understand how art and artists have engaged in protest. Much of modern art is conceptual, using installations and performances, to communicate. Therefore, we will start the class by first understanding what we mean by protest, which will underpin how we think about artists’ using various media to voice opposition. Then, we turn to T. J. Clark, the preeminent art historian, for his answer to the question, when did modern art begin and how does it relate to protest? This question will lead us to explore the debate on the purpose of art in the 20th century and into the present. Next, we will move to how artists responded to moments of crisis in the early 20th century—world wars, economic depression, and the rise of fascism—because the art that emerged informs much of what we see today. Based on these foundational questions, the class will turn to case studies from around the globe.

Our world is interconnected thanks to the worldwide web, social media, academic institutions, news outlets, ease of international travel, fashion trends, diasporic communities, music…the threads that are woven into the global textile are boundless. However, this textile is torn and frayed. People are–as they have been for centuries–fragmented by war, religion, disasters and crises, poverty, and disparate concentrations of wealth. In this class, we will examine these various fault lines, by addressing issues such as cultural difference, nationalism, populism, and identity politics. By understanding the fissures in our collective humanity, we will have a better understanding of what binds us together.

This course centers around analyzing the political economy and structure of the contemporary world order, its underlying logics, origins and inherently political nature, how it is (and is not) governed, and how power is exercised therein by actors including states, corporations, international institutions, and even individuals. As we will highlight throughout the semester, issues related to global political economy and governance shape the lives of people all over the world, including our own.