Fourth Year Honours Seminars

No matter the time or place, we find the human tendency towards conformity, cognitive dissonance, preference falsification and dissent. Human societies have always identified some behavior and thinking as correct and other thinking and behaviour as wrong. And yet, when we look across a range of societies and across time, differences among them exist. In fact, many societies and cultures disagree on fundamental issues such as the family, the role of the state, politics and law. Even within the same society and culture we do not agree. Is this from a lack of information or perspective? Or is it due to something else?

The concept of diaspora broadens our understanding of identity and culture beyond national, ethnic, or racial boundaries. Diasporas function not as extensions of nation states but as catalysts for transnational and de-territorialized cultural, political, and social formations. This seminar focuses on how diasporic communities disrupt social and political life across home and host societies. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we explore themes such as imagination, hybridity, double consciousness, resistance, memory, nostalgia, and belonging to understand identity, political culture, displacement, and transnational connection across generations. Structured in three interconnected parts, the seminar begins by examining major theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches to diaspora. It then explores how diasporic actors produce disruptive political subjectivities through transnational networks, how racialized and gendered protests reshape diasporic and host societies, and how states seek to regulate or contain these expressions of agency. The final section examines how everyday and embodied practices of faith, music, food, and gender rework cultural boundaries, transform public life, and generate alternative forms of belonging globally. 

The concept of diaspora broadens our understanding of identity and culture beyond national, ethnic, or racial boundaries. Diasporas function not as extensions of nation states but as catalysts for transnational and de-territorialized cultural, political, and social formations. This seminar focuses on how diasporic communities disrupt social and political life across home and host societies. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we explore themes such as imagination, hybridity, double consciousness, resistance, memory, nostalgia, and belonging to understand identity, political culture, displacement, and transnational connection across generations. Structured in three interconnected parts, the seminar begins by examining major theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches to diaspora. It then explores how diasporic actors produce disruptive political subjectivities through transnational networks, how racialized and gendered protests reshape diasporic and host societies, and how states seek to regulate or contain these expressions of agency. The final section examines how everyday and embodied practices of faith, music, food, and gender rework cultural boundaries, transform public life, and generate alternative forms of belonging globally. 

Many students and scholars of Global and International Studies aspire to contribute to positive change, improve the lives of others, and foster a better world. But the question of how to engage in meaningful social change, “help” others, and reduce poverty, inequality, and suffering is not at all straightforward. Global development has a sordid history, and contemporary philanthropic efforts are fraught with contention. Does foreign aid work? Are NGOs good? Can social justice be achieved in social enterprise?

This class is divided into three sections: the first two sections focus on critique. We will first explore some problems with contemporary development solutions, including the allure and the snags of “big ideas”, the pitfalls of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and the problems with private philanthropy. The historic and persistent failures of international assistance demand that we understand them, but they also serve as tragic illustrations of how trenchant inequalities of the human condition persist in our time: their histories give us a window into the proliferation of private foundations and social entrepreneurship. In the second section of our class, we will dig deeper into private-sector-led poverty reduction by exploring the potential of innovation, venture capital, and food science to remedy the problems of hunger, food insecurity, and climate change. Together, our two “critique” sections shed light on how dominant historic and contemporary aid strategies, ideologies, and “solutions” offer us a window into the root causes of global inequality and suffering: they shed light on the pitfalls of the development paths we have trod and illuminate pathways forward. With this insight, we then ask: What is to be done? In the final section of our class, we will explore concrete examples of meaningful and lasting social change – civic action, policy reform, community organizing – equipping ourselves with new tools and ideas to imagine possibilities for change to create a more just and equitable world.