The Global and Transnational Engagement Focus offers an integrated pathway for knowledge acquisition and skill development in international affairs. It is intended to support Antioch’s institutional commitment to educating global citizens by engaging students directly in settings where they can exercise their cross-cultural abilities. The transnational emphasis of the program anchors a student’s experience in contemporary global challenges while engaging them with the cultures, organizations, and movements that operate across national divides.
This curricular focus offers an opportunity for students to internationalize their self-designed majors and distinguish themselves through the development of a global and transnational perspective. Building on existing coursework as well as established opportunities with international co-op partners and language immersion programs, the focus offers a path for students to understand global issues, to participate in learning initiatives abroad, and to engage in research on international themes.
The emphasis on transnational approaches signals an understanding of the cultural, economic, ecological and ideological flows across borders. It problematizes binary thinking of global-local, center-periphery, western and non-western or Global North-South categorizations. Moving away from approaches that reinforce imperial and hegemonic power structures, students in this curricular focus are led to interrogate constructions of nation, citizenship and belonging. Students examine their own positionality as well as gain an understanding of liberatory efforts towards global democracy, environmental sustainability, community resilience, and personal and political sovereignty within a transnational context.
Supported by faculty efforts to create long-term relationships with communities around the world, students are expected to develop the cross-cultural communicative skills necessary to collaborate with educational partners at home and abroad. These engagements may form the basis of senior capstone projects and other research efforts undergirded by a variety of methodological approaches, including: ethnography and participatory action research, archival research and oral history, discourse and textual analysis, policy analysis, environmental and social impact assessments, and social practice in the arts.
The emphasis on global and transnational approaches signals a pedagogical orientation that is centered on reflexive and reciprocal relationships with partners and communities abroad. Transnational engagement in this context means that students are expected to develop robust collaborative, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural capacities in order to contribute to sustained, meaningful engagement with others across national and cultural boundaries. Antioch’s curriculum reflects a deep commitment to the promotion of both student agency and effective community engagement in this regard. Students with a Global and Transnational Studies focus will participate in dialogue with interlocutors off campus as they forge shared projects based on principles of collaborative learning, mutual aid, and community-led generative practices that lead toward equitable futures for all involved.
Goals
This Focus will enable students to:
Students that graduate with a Global and Transnational Engagement focus will be able to demonstrate advanced knowledge of transnational social and political movements, global economic systems, world historical processes, international policy-making, as well as the philosophies, theories, and ideologies that animate our global imaginaries. This focus is designed to help students develop the skills and experience necessary to enter a variety of fields in order to make impactful change in the social, cultural and political realms internationally. Completion of this curricular focus will prepare students to effectively engage with institutions such as government agencies, international businesses and nonprofits, political organizations, charities, schools, and relief organization.
Drawing upon faculty expertise, the curricular focus in Global and Transnational Engagement is offered through courses and academic experiences that emphasize global, transnational or cross-cultural themes. There are numerous existing courses in the Curriculum Catalogue that lend themselves to the focus. The experiential component of the focus can be attained through co-op or other immersive work.
Requirements:
To graduate with a focus in Global and Transnational Engagement, two options are available—both with Breadth, Depth and Experiential course requirements. Option 1 requires 12 class credits earned through two courses from the Breadth Course list and one course from the Depth Course list, plus an approved 12-credit global/transnational Co-op Field Experience for a total of 24 credits. Option 2 requires 20 class credits earned through four courses from the Breadth Course list and one course from the Depth Course list, plus a 3-credit Language Capstone course for a total of 23 credits. The Co-op Field Experience must be an international/cultural immersion co-op or a domestic experience that engages the student in global/transnational themes, as determined through review by the Global/International Education Committee.