Globalization is a big word. But a new major in global studies
aims to give UCLA students the tools to understand it.
The first core class for the major ““ Global Studies 1
““ appeared Monday on URSA. Professors say the program will
combine academic disciplines to put UCLA at the forefront of this
emerging field.
The political, economic and human trends that make up
globalization are complicated and interwoven.
The Internet and television give people the world over access to
the same information, and one is rarely far from one of the
world’s 11,227 Burger Kings or more than 9,000 Starbucks, but
there is more to it than technology and international business.
Globalization concerns human and cultural issues such as the
large-scale immigration from northern Africa to Spain and France,
and worries about cultural domination by the United States, which
is sometimes called “the imperialism of Mickey
Mouse.”
From the perspective of many UCLA professors, this phenomenon is
too complicated to be studied in a single discipline.
“We need new tools, new paradigms, new methods to study
this phenomenon that lets us live in a totally different
way,” said Ali Behdad, a UCLA English professor who will
chair the global studies program.
And the new global studies major is expected to give students
exactly that.
The interdisciplinary major will be team-taught and will include
a summer abroad, a senior thesis and guest lectures by such notable
figures as former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and UCLA
Chancellor Albert Carnesale.
Some professors involved say their teaching methods will be as
new as their subject.
Geoffrey Garrett, vice provost of the UCLA International
Institute and the architect of the global studies major, said their
teaching methods will follow the form of a freshman cluster class
raised to the level of a major.
Dominic Thomas, the UCLA professor of French and Francophone
studies who will be the lead teacher of Global Studies 1, said he
hopes to make the class a more active experience by mixing
“open mic” question-and-answer sessions with his
lectures.
Even though the major has not yet been announced, some students
are already interested.
“The best part of the major in my opinion is the study
abroad segment,” said Nick Steele, a fourth-year political
science and economics student and a member of the Undergraduate
International Relations Society.
Last summer, Steele and Ryan Finstad, a third-year political
science student and a fellow member of international relations
society, went on the pilot program for the summer institute that
will become part of the global studies major.
They spent five weeks in Shanghai studying emerging economies
and globalization with Yunxiang Yan, a UCLA anthropology professor.
They also took trips to many of the factories that drive
Shanghai’s economy. Afterward, Steele got a four-week
internship in Shanghai with a business consulting firm.
“It really added to the realism to be able to work for a
company in the economy that I was studying,” Steele said.
Garrett said the summer abroad is an essential part of the
major. He said it gives students the chance to see how the global
trends they have studied play out in individual communities, which
gives their wide ranging studies a human element.
In addition to Shanghai, this year the university will offer
summer programs in Hong Kong and Guanajuato, Mexico. Garrett said
he is also working toward programs in Beirut, Sydney and
Vienna.
He said rather than have the institutes in cities where study
abroad programs already exist, the locations are supposed to be
“more at the cutting edge, where the effects of globalization
are more evident.”
Each five-week summer program will be led by a senior UCLA
faculty member and will let students earn 10 units. Students will
take two classes: one to bring them up to speed on the history and
culture of the place they are staying, and another for research.
And like the program in Shanghai, there will be field trips to
less-than-traditional places.
The summer institutes cost $3,500, which includes housing,
registration, tuition and field trips. In the Shanghai program
there is also a $150 charge for internship placement.
In addition to the summer abroad and the senior thesis, the
global studies major requires that students achieve foreign
language proficiency up to level six, statistics, the three core
classes ““ Global Studies 1, 100A and 100B ““ and a
variety of courses from subjects including anthropology, history,
languages, economics, geography and political science.
Garrett said he expects the major’s rigorous nature to
keep it small in terms of the number of students who choose to
enroll, but the minor will give other students a chance to
experience many of the same elements without the same level of
commitment.
Both Steele and Finstad are too close to graduation to major in
global studies, but they are not too late to see its appeal.
Finstad may try to do the minor, and Steele said he would have
been interested if it had been available earlier.
“I kind of feel like I did it on my own, with (political
science and economics), and we did their summer program, but it
would have been nice if it had been already made for me,” he
said.
UCLA will not be the first university to have a global studies
program, but the professors involved say its interdisciplinary
focus will put it on the cutting edge.
“In setting up this program we are going to be at the
forefront of this new discipline,” Behdad said.
While many schools have international studies programs that
focus on relationships between nations, Garrett said the UCLA
global studies program will join a popular program at UC Santa
Barbara as one of the few programs to go deeper than just
politics.
“The world is a complicated place, and students want to
understand and contribute to that world, and that is what global
studies allows you to do,” Behdad said.
He said the term “international studies” implies
crossing national boundaries, but “global studies”
deals with boundaries that are dissolving.
Thomas said as people are inundated with information as a result
of globalization, interdisciplinary programs like global studies
can help students unpack it.
“We are essentially trying to get students to bridge the
gap between learning and thinking,” Thomas said.
And as globalization brings people, cultures and economies ever
closer to one another, the gaps between academic disciplines narrow
as well.
Garrett said professors in the humanities and the social
sciences are increasingly studying the same cultural phenomenon.
And many of the professors who will teach global studies have both
interdisciplinary interests and international backgrounds.
Behdad was born in Iran, received his doctorate comparative
literature, teaches English and studies post-colonialism. Garrett
was born in Australia, obtained his doctorate in the United States,
taught at Oxford, and spent several years in Berlin. And Thomas
““ who was born in Germany, grew up in France, and was
educated in England ““ works on questions of racism and
immigration in France.