Course description
Globalization has become the focus of extensive debate and scholarship regarding the “Third World” that emerged in the context of half a millennium of European expansion. Although the Third World is increasingly differentiated internally, it has suffered the multiple impacts of colonialism and comparative poverty.
A recent intensification of global processes has been marked by technological advances in communication, rapid movement of financial capital, growth of supranational legal and political institutions and advocacy networks; and sometimes extreme destabilization of families, historical identities, and communities.
Students are encouraged to engage these issues through a variety of disciplines: history, economics, the arts, legal studies, and politics, among others. Students are also encouraged to learn new languages and visit disadvantaged regions.
Sample First-Year Course
World Trade and the WTO
What is the World Trade Organization (WTO) and how does it function? What is the relationship between economic trade theory and WTO policies? How do decisions made at the WTO impact the lives of people in developed and developing countries? We will examine these questions by drawing upon writings (by scholars, activists, labor unionists) and film documentaries. After developing a general idea of the structure and impact of the WTO, we will specifically explore why the 2003 Cancun meetings were considered a significant ‘victory’ for developing countries and whether an alternative strategy to neoliberal globalization is beginning to emerge.
Sample Courses at Hampshire
African Development
Border Matters: Mexico & the U.S.
Comparitive Orientalisms: Afro/Arab/Asian Connections
The Cuban Revolution: Visions, Reality, Crisis & Collapse
Culture, Religion & Environmentalism
Ethnography of South Asia
Empires & Citizenship: Postcoloniality & Puerto Rican Communities
Global Ethnography
Globalization & Africa
Interrogating Fear: Bioterror, the Environment & the Construction of Threats
Locating Resistance in a Globalizing World
Making of Modern South Asia
North-South or South-South? International
Economic Relations in the Age of Globalization
Reproductive Rights: Domestic and International Perspectives
Rethinking the Population Problem
The State & Politics in Africa
Social Movements & Social Change: Zapatismo
Third World, Second Sex
World Trade & the WTO
Through the Consortium
Africa: Problems & Prospects (SC)
Documenting Change: Southeast Asia (AC)
Gender & Economic Development (UMass)
The Press & the 3rd World (UMass)
Seminar in Third World Development (MHC)
World Politics (AC)
Facilities and Resources
The Global Migrations Program is a college-wide initiative funded by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation to rethink cold war paradigms of knowledge and citizenship in light of the unprecedented movements of persons across national and cultural borders that characterize our globalizing world. The program seeks to develop new curricular initiatives that are responsive to these transnational, multicultural movements and the local conflicts over identity, belonging, and citizenship to which they give rise, asking: What happens when we make migration/movement the focus of our teaching and learning rather than discrete nations/cultures, when we emphasize “routes” over “roots”?
The Population and Development Program was established in 1986 to bring a global perspective to the study and investigation of population and environmental issues and to challenge traditional views of over-population and immigration as primary causes of environmental degradation, political instability, and poverty. The program now serves as a documentation and monitoring resource for educators, students, journalists, activists, leaders, and policy makers in the U.S. and abroad. The program offers courses and forums, sponsors visiting scholars and activists to speak on campus, and publishes and curricula advancing alternative analysis and investigation on reproductive rights, population, development, environmentalism, and women’s health.
The Five College Peace and World Security Studies Program was established in 1982 by faculty from the Five College consortium to enhance undergraduate education in the field of peace and international security studies. The program has since grown into a major educational effort which offers publications, workshops, course offerings at the Five Colleges, public lectures and conferences, and a student leadership program.
The annual Eqbal Ahmad Lecture series focuses on issues of the Third World and honors the teaching, scholarship, and activism of the late Eqbal Ahmad, a long-time professor of world politics at Hampshire College. The event has attracted many notable speakers. Secretary-General Kofi Annan inaugurated the series in academic year 1998-1999. Other speakers have included renowned professor and author of Orientalism, Edward Said; Palestinian doctor and recent candidate for the presidency of the Palestinian National Authority, Mustafa Barghouthi; as well as New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
