Global Studies

Department News

GS students honored with fellowships: Five Global Studies majors have been awarded fellowships to pursue their research during the coming months under the auspices of the St. Lawrence University Fellows program and the Tanner Fellowship program.

Keilly Cutler ‘10: Zones of Production: The Emergence and Evolution of Special Economic Zones in China (SLU Fellowship)
Bupe Mazimba ‘11: Microcredit: Zambia’s Salvation? (SLU Fellowship)
Casey O’Brien ‘11: A Selective Analysis and Comparison of the Conception of Natural Rights in Western and Islamic Traditions (SLU Fellowship)
Melih Cokaygil ‘11: An Ethnographic Field Study of Kurds in Southeastem Turkey (Tanner Fellowship)
Khadeeja Hamid ‘11: Reconceptualizing Development in Rural India (Tanner Fellowship)

In addition to carrying out their research, Cutler and Hamid will be contributing content to the Weave as part of their projects. Congratulations to all five students on receiving these prestigious fellowships!

John Collins

Professor delivers lecture on Palestine and settler colonialism: Associate Professor and Chair of Global Studies John Collins spoke on campus on Tuesday, February 17 as part of the university’s Contemporary Issues Forum. Collins’ lecture was titled “Settler Colonialism and Its Discontents: Why Palestine Matters So Much.” With Palestine as a primary example, the lecture focused on the turbulent period that has been called the “long 1960s” to explore the global significance of relationship between settler-colonial projects and the specific forms of radical opposition they inevitably produce.

New bloggers on the Weave

The Weave (www.weavenews.org), a public intellectual project that emerged out of the Global Studies department in 2007, is very excited to announce that we have recently launched a new group of bloggers who are currently writing about a wide range of issues from urban poverty to US military involvement in Africa to the upcoming UN climate change summit in Copenhagen. Scroll down for a full list of our bloggers and their areas of interest. We have also recently begun a new series of short interviews titled Interweaving.

For those who haven’t had a chance to visit the site, the Weave is a space for critical commentary on current local, national and global issues and news coverage of those issues. Since its inception as part of the department’s course in Global News Analysis it has maintained a strong focus on stories that are not receiving sufficient attention from the mainstream news media.

As we move forward with this latest incarnation of the Weave, we are anxious to build our readership so that we can receive critical feedback on our work and reach our goal of promoting broader dialogue on the issues we are addressing. This is where you come in! We hope you will visit the site, read the blogs, and offer comments in response to what you’re reading. Becoming a part of the conversation on the Weave is easy:

Register: Become a registered user by clicking on the “Register” link found on the right side of the home page. You’ll receive an email with a link; click on it to confirm your registration.
Read: Log in from the home page, then click on “The Weave Blog” to view all the latest posts from our bloggers in one place. (You can also click on any of the individual slides - these will take you to the individual blogs.)
Respond: At the bottom of each blog post you’ll find a space for comments. Write back to us!

We also encourage faculty to let their students know about the Weave. Given the wide range of issues we are addressing, having students read and respond to the blogs can be a great addition to courses in many departments and programs.

Current bloggers on the Weave:

A. Wesley Ballantyne (SLU ‘08) writes about the US interest, presence, and influence within Africa as well as American media coverage of the continent. He is especially interested in the impact of AFRICOM (the new US military command in Africa).
Laura Berger (SLU ‘12) writes about issues related to non-renewable and renewable energy resources.
John Collins (Associate Professor of Global Studies) blogs about a variety of underreported stories in Palestine, Spain and elsewhere. He also conducts interviews as part of the Interweaving project.
Adriana Cordero-Calderon (SLU ‘09) examines the arts and social change
Emily Gardner (SLU ‘10) examines the persistent problem of human trafficking.
Khadeeja Hamid (SLU ‘11, GS major currently studying in China) is writing about daily life in Shanghai, how globalization is impacting the city, and the upcoming world expo there.
Brian Lind (SLU ‘04, GS major) writes about “Obama as peacemaker,” critically examining how Barack Obama shapes his presidency and his country in light of being named a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
Ruvimbo Mangoma (SLU ‘11) provides an insightful mix of stories in and around the African continent.
Steve Peraza (SLU ‘06, current PhD student in History at the University of Buffalo) is exploring the many dimensions of the problem of urban poverty and thinking through possible ways of solving it.
Somdeep Sen (SLU ‘07, current M.A. student in Ankara, Turkey) blogs about issues of political radicalism and other underreported stories from around the globe.
Dan Shafer (SLU ‘08, GS major) was in Kenya during the period of post-election violence in December ‘07 and shared his reflections exclusively with the Weave. He continues to blog about international humanitarian work, NGOs, and whistleblowers around the world.
Matt Sims (SLU ‘07) provides a focus on Ethiopia, where he lived from August 2008 - July 2009.
Milan Sova (SLU ‘11, GS major currently studying in Denmark) is examining Danish perspectives on the upcoming COP 15 climate change conference in Copenhagen.
Nicole Szucs Guzman (SLU ‘10, GS major) covers the COP 15, climate change, and social movements.
Andrea Teti (Lecturer in International Relations, University of Aberdeen) will shortly begin blogging about issues of democracy in Europe and the Middle East.
Sean Watkins (SLU ‘07, GS major and current PhD student in Communications at Bowling Green State University) writes about technological issues in the media with an emphasis on culture.

Connecting current and former GS students: Sean Watkins, a Global Studies major who graduated in 2006, is spearheading an effort to build a network of current and former Global Studies students. As we near the ten-year mark of the department, now is a good time for this initiative. Our graduates are doing all sorts of interesting things, and our current students could benefit enormously from being in touch with these alumni. If you’re interested in joining this new Global Studies network, just send an email to Sean. Or, if you prefer, you can find us on Facebook (which, coincidentally or not, was the topic of Sean’s GS honors thesis). Thanks - and spread the word!

Globalizations

New article on Palestine: The latest issue of the journal Globalizations, published in the UK by Taylor & Francis, contains an article by John Collins, Associate Professor and Chair of Global Studies. Titled “Confinement Under an Open Sky: Following the Speed Trap From Guernica to Gaza and Beyond,” the article addresses the relationship between acceleration and confinement in Palestine.

Selfa Chew joins the Global Studies Department as a Visiting Assistant Professor for the 2008-2009 academic year. During the fall semester, she taught two sections of GS102 “Introduction to Global Studies II: Race, Culture and Identity” as well as a special topics course (GS247D) titled “Warriors of the West: Buffalo Soldiers, Native Americans, and the Impact of Colonization.” In Spring 2009 she will teach two sections of GS102 as well as one section of “La Frontera: Cultural Identities on the Mexican-U.S. Borderland” (GS250).

Chew holds a MFA in Creative Writing and a MA in Borderlands History from the University of Texas at El Paso. She is an editor of Border Senses and coordinates the Mexican Contemporary Literature Conference. Her work (poetic, graphic, narrative and editorial) has been published in Peru, Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Holland, and the United States. Her latest book is Mudas las Garzas (Ediciones Eon, 2007). She is currently a doctoral student in the Department of History at UTEP. Her research is focused on the Mexican Japanese relocation program during WWII.

Corridos in Migrant Memory

Review of professor’s book: The book Corridos in Migrant Memory, published in 2006 by Prof. Martha Chew Sanchez, was recently reviewed in the Journal of Folklore Research, a major scholarly journal of folklore and ethnomusicology. In the review, Maria Herrera-Sobek of UC-Santa Barbara describes the book as “a highly readable, deeply sensitive, and theoretically sophisticated study of the Mexican/Chicano corrido and its relationship to identity construction.” Read the full review.