CSI Curriculum

The Approaches course is the key gateway course for students entering the concentration, and it should introduce them to primary theoretical texts of anthropology, ethnography, and sociology, as well as important theories germane to analytical literary, visual, and performance studies and cultures.  Balancing the theories and methods between the social sciences and the humanities, students familiarize themselves with not only the ethics of using human subjects and their identifications in representations, but also the rewards of close textual analysis.

Sample Courses:

• Ethnography and Representation
• Identities at Intersections
  
• Sex and Gender: The Third Wave

The specific regions and topics covered in CSI Topics seminars depend on the expertise of the instructor.  It is possible that the regions covered in the course may not match individual GLS students’ Junior Year site; therefore, all Topics courses assign individualized and self-directed research projects that require students to demonstrate knowledge of their future study site’s cultures.By the time they arrive in an CSI Topics course, GLS sophomores have surveyed great works of art, literature, philosophy, music, and politics around the globe and throughout history.  All SCI topics courses therefore build upon that preparation by introducing students to contemporary topics in the construction of identity and the traffic in representations.  In other words, every Topics course addresses the question of how history influences the present.  The geographical scope should include comparative/contrastive topics that span at least two different geo-political and/or national/regional territories.

Sample Courses:

• International Migration: Globalization’s Last Frontier
• Gender & Sexuality: The Global & the Intimate
• More Than Just a Game: Sport, Representation, and Cultural Identity

This course will foster students’ independent thinking and research while identifying potential areas of further investigation in preparation for student’s senior thesis project. It will focus on developing research approaches that will best serve students’ thesis interests. In order to move towards developing an exciting and feasible research project, students will practice creating generative research questions, consider different theoretical lenses, compile and annotate appropriate sources, and complete specific research tasks. In addition, students will be encouraged to gather the data and resources to which they have access during their time abroad. This work will be done individually, collaboratively with other students, and in consultation with the instructor. The course work will lead to the completion of an annotated bibliography, an essay that might serve as a draft chapter of the thesis, and a prospectus outlining a potential thesis topic growing out of the essay.

The work that you do in this course is intended to prepare you for your senior thesis and to help you integrate your study abroad experience with your larger academic trajectory. Your senior thesis however will be primarily shaped and written during the senior year. Therefore, you need not pursue the same topic for your senior thesis, although ideally there will be many connections between the work you do in this class and your thesis. Even if you stay focused on the same project, you will undoubtedly make significant adjustments to your thesis project as you work with your thesis advisor next year.

The thesis will enter the ongoing intellectual conversation concerning its subject by engaging sources that both inform its subject matter and its method for approaching that subject. When practical, the thesis will include some sources in the language of the junior year siteDepending on the nature of its subject and approach, the finished thesis will normally run approximately 40–50 pages (or the equivalent).

By March 15th, students submit a complete draft (with abstract) to the thesis director, who passes it on to the second reader. By April 1, the student receives feedback from the second reader.

Students submit final draft to thesis director for grading and deposit by April 15th (including a copy in electronic form).

A traditional thesis includes: an Abstract, a Title Page, a Table of Contents, the body of the thesis divided into chapters, a list of References/Bibliography, and Appendices (optional)

Criteria of Excellence 

CONTENT

The thesis must enter into an intellectual conversation concerning its subject by engaging relevant sources from a range of disciplines that effectively inform its subject and related questions posed by the thesis, or, conversely,  that effectively interrogate conclusions proposed by the thesis and its method for approaching that subject. The theoretical framework of the thesis should be developed from primary and secondary research by the student, which should include reference to primary and secondary texts appropriate to the work and priorities of CSI. Evidence of the ability to ‘read’ and apply meaning drawn from primary texts is particularly important. When appropriate, the thesis should deploy primary or secondary sources in the language of the junior year site.

The thesis is a requirement for a degree in Global Liberal Studies and as such its subject should have global or transnational resonance and exhibit awareness of the distinct physical, socio-political and cultural aspects of each place under consideration.

WRITING

The clarity and fluency with which arguments are proposed, elaborated and supported is important, as are vocabulary, grammar, sentence and paragraph structure. The structure of chapters may be traditional or not, but each chapter needs an introduction or roadmap to its contents as well as a conclusion or summation and read together, the chapters should amount to a coherent work.

Depending on the nature of its subject and approach, the finished thesis will normally be 50 pages or more, however, length is not regarded as indicative of excellence.