| Week |
Course Content |
| Week 1 |
9/8 Introduction to class |
| Week 2 |
9/15 Where we are? How did we get here?
Adam Tooze, ”Shockwave” – https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n08/adam-tooze/shockwave
Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A view from the future (selections)
|
| Week 3 |
9/22 What is globalization? Whose globalization?
Manfred Steger, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (selections)
“When did globalization start?” https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/23/when-did-globalisation-start
Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat (selections)
|
| Week 4 |
9/29 No class - holiday |
| Week 5 |
10/6 Culture and globalization: difference
Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”
|
| Week 6 |
10/13 Culture and globalization: sameness
Frederic Jameson, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”
|
| Week 7 |
10/20 Space and time
Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (selections)
Wim Wenders, Tokyo-Ga (film)
|
| Week 8 |
10/27 Self-directed midterm assignment:
Students will curate 2 texts that pertain to one of the concepts discussed in week 1-8, and write a short curatorial note (800 words) that explains their choices. These texts can be films, documentaries, YouTube videos, or newspaper reports. The main goal is just to exemplify and discuss the concept. |
| Week 9 |
11/3 Deterritorialization and non-places
Marc Auge, Non-places (selections) |
| Week 10 |
11/10 Cities, migration and cosmopolitanism
Saskia Sassen, “The Global City: Introducing a Concept”
Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Cosmopolitanism”
Teju Cole, Open City (selections)
|
| Week 11 |
11/17 Capital
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (selections)
|
| Week 12 |
11/24 Supply chains
Anna Tsing, “Supply Chains and the Human Condition”
Allan Sekula, Fish Story (photography book)
|
| Week 13 |
12/1 Seascapes
Sean Metzger, The Chinese Atlantic (selections)
Mati Diop, Atlantics (film)
|
| Week 14 |
12/8 Encounters and contact zones
Anna Tsing, Friction (selections)
|
| Week 15 |
12/15 Land and infrastructure
Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story (selections)
“Is fair trade finished?” https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2019/sep/02/is-fair-trade-finished-podcast
|
| Week 16 |
2/22 Planetary consciousness and the Anthropocene
Ursula Heise, “From the Blue Planet to Google Earth”
ϴ/29 Student presentationse/5 Self-directed final paper
Students will write a long paper (1500 words and above) that discusses a moving object (a commodity, groups of people, etc.) which help to illuminate a concept about globalization that has been discussed in weeks 10-16. Examples of such moving objects include the global coffee industry, migrant workers in Southeast Asia, and the manufacturing of cars. This paper will be a longer version of the student presentation in week 17. |
self-directed
learning |
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