Culture and Identity in Global Issues

Pick up any news article today, and you’ll see references to culture, identity, and globalization. The growth of white nationalism in the United States. The prolonged politics of Brexit in Europe. The rise and fall of the Islamic State across the Middle East. Constructions of culture, identity, and globalization appear all around us. In fact, all of you invoked these terms in your essays to join our Master’s program in Global Thought.

So join me for a deep dive this semester to investigate what we mean by these terms. How do people define culture, identity, and globalization? What kinds of work do these loaded words do? Are their definitions the same or different across societies? How have various academic disciplines defined these terms? How can analyzing debates over their use in psychiatry, psychology, and anthropology help us understand contemporary events?

The goal of this seminar is to explore a wide range of sources on culture, identity, and globalization. We start with big thematic ideas like culture and identity at the beginning of the course and then focus on particular issues such as nationalism and immigration. The point is not to side with any single author, but to make our assumptions explicit when we use these terms and to better analyze the arguments of others.