Interdisciplinary Studies 210: Global Returns: Critical Engagements after Study Abroad

This course is designed for students returning from Whitman Off-Campus Study programs outside the United States, or after other extended international study. It provides students with the tools, perspectives, and a set of targeted assignments to make sense of and communicate with others about their transformative experiences abroad. When students return from study abroad, too often their time away becomes adjunct or ancillary to the rest of their studies. When this happens, opportunities to situate their international experiences within a larger, critical liberal arts framework are diminished or lost altogether. This course offers students an opportunity to return to their global experiences through critical interrogation and reflection on what it means to live in another culture. Students will analyze their off-campus study through the lens of other forms of global encounter, including colonialism, othering, and cosmopolitanism. Students will also assess different ways study abroad has transformed them, including psychologically and politically. In addition to readings and discussions, students will carry out a group project addressing how global issues in the media are framed and presented differently depending on international location. Graded credit/no credit.