Global Scholars Seminar

By introducing students to undergraduate research, providing them with opportunities to learn more about study and research abroad, and helping them think about ways they might integrate international into their post-graduate lives, the seminar serves as the foundation for the Global Scholars program.

Mobility, Borders, and Belonging

Time/Place: 5:30-8:00 pm on Thursdays ♦ 102 Nunemaker

Dr. Andrew Denning, Associate Professor in History, will teach the Spring 2020 Global Scholars Seminar. The course will examine the historical development and contemporary dynamics of mobility in a global context. Ours is an era of global supply chains, international finance, budget trans-oceanic flights, and varied forms of migration (forced/chosen, temporary/permanent). The circulation of people, goods, and ideas shapes social identities, political debates, and economic development. How new is this state of affairs? How have these forms of mobility affected ideas of national identity and territorial sovereignty? How does the way we move influence our relationship to our natural environment and one another?

This interdisciplinary seminar will explore mobility from a variety of perspectives: how our bodies and minds sense and perceive movement; transport, communications, travel, and tourism in the making of the modern world; and the forces motivating migration, diaspora, and trafficking. By studying mobility from a variety of perspectives, students will come to understand how tensions between movement and rootedness define our historical moment.