New Geographies, New Pedagogies: Institute of International Studies; UC Berkeley New Geographies, New Pedagogies: Revitalizing Area Studies through Doctoral Research Training in Global Ethnography

 

Activities and Programs


The project will consist of three inter-related activities. The first two activities described below address doctoral research training and undergraduate curriculum and teaching. But they will be linked to a third activity, the three year-long thematic seminars. The thematic functions also include working groups, residential fellows and conferences for both faculty and students, irrespective of their discipline or area, anare intended to illustrate the theoretical and methodological issues which run across the training functions.

I. Research Training for Globalized Sites

The doctoral training component will draw students in the first two or three years of graduate training to participate in two sets of activities oriented to the problems of conducting research in globalized sites.

  1. Year-Long Doctoral Research Practicum: This is a two-semester sequence jointly taught by two faculty with differing disciplinary and area studies backgrounds. The first semester will be devoted to "theory and method in global research" and to the production of a research design for the second semester. The second semester will involve each student working in a Bay Area community as a way of practicing the art of fieldresearch in global sites. The selection of a specific community -- say Indians in Fremont -- will permit the student to build upon his/her area studies background and but also compel an engagement between that area studies training and the community's residence outside of the region (i.e. with globalization and transnationalism). The model for this second semester will Berkeley sociologist Michael Burawoy's project and volume Ethnography Unbound (UC Press, 1995) which provides an exemplary structures for raising issues associated with conducting "global ethnography'.

  2. Dissertation Workshops: Organized biannually using the well-established "Berkeley model" as a way of working with students (across region, disciplines, and time periods) who are at the point of preparing their own doctoral research prospectus.

II. Curriculum Development for Area Studies Program

The purpose of this activity is to encourage faculty and student participants in the "New Geographies" activities to use the initiative to restructure their own area studies courses, both within the disciplines and as faculty in the areas studies majors (Asian, Latin American, Middle East, etc). The project will provide three sorts of support:

  1. Faculty Curriculum Grants: Small grants of up to $2,500.00 will be provided for faculty to assist in the reorganization and redesign of their area studies courses.

  2. Graduate Student Instructor training: In conjunction with the Berkeley Office of Teaching and Learning, funding will be provided to provide specific areas studies/globalization training modules and materials for GSI's who will work in area studies classes.

  3. Website resources: Provided to develop materials which can be posted on the award-winning IIS website and made available to teachers, instructors and GSI's who are involved with area studies instruction. Such materials might include reading lists, course outlines, class modules, prospectus writing, resources for field methods and so on.

III. Traveling Theory: Year-Long Thematic Activities

Each year-long theme with have a common set of activities in which faculty and students from all area studies backgrounds may participate. The three broad themes are as follows:

Year 1: Diasporas, Diasporic Identities, and the Politics of the Homeland

Year 2: New Regions, New Communities, New Citizenships

Year 3: Shocks, Perturbations, and Crises: Globalization and the Regions

Each year's theme will be anchored in the following activities:

  1. Seminar Series: Four speakers will be invited each semester to give a paper on the theme. The paper will be distributed electronically in advance and discussed by a commentator from another region and discipline. The speaker will not lecture but will engage in a working seminar prompted by opening critical remarks.

  2. Residential Fellows: Short-term residential fellows (three per year) will be brought to the campus from differing regions of the world to participate in the seminar series and to work with the Working Groups. These fellows will be selected on the basis of their innovative approaches to social theory or analysis rooted in the intellectual agendas or concerns of other parts of the world.

  3. Working Groups: Under the umbrella of the theme, self-organizing faculty-student Working Groups will be provided with small ($1,500.00) grants to facilitate their activities on a specific sub-theme of the year's broader thematic inquiry (for example: comparative long distance nationalism in South Asia and the Middle East within the broad theme of Diasporas, Diasporic Identities, and the Politics of the Homeland). Each Working Group will write a final report and participate in the Annual Conference.

  4. Annual Conference: At the end of each year an Annual Conference will be organized for the Working Groups to present papers and ideas to each other and a limited number of invited speakers. The Annual Conference will provide closure to both the seminar series and the Working Group activities.

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