The New School Global Studies curriculum focuses on social transformation and innovative responses to seemingly intractable problems. Students who undertake the global studies curriculum learn to think across disciplines, to move between the scales of the local and the global, and not to lose sight of the realities of human lives at the center of our investigations.
Globalization restructures the way states, societies, communities, and individuals relate to each other, creating new challenges that cannot be met by nations or markets alone—challenges such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, human trafficking, international trade regulations, poverty and hunger, the effects of new communications technology, and unprecedented migration. Global Studies prepares students to understand these problems with the aim of realizing a more just and equitable world.
Jonathan Bach, Chair
Global Studies electives are organized into thematic clusters.
Curriculum Clusters
The Ground Beneath our Feet: Places, Peoples, and Encounters [PPE]
This cluster explores the lenses and identities through which we perceive the world and how the global and local are linked in ways not always obvious to the casual observer or embedded participant. Students consider experiences and accounts of the global—everyday life under globalization, personal and national narratives, and the construction of hybrid, cosmopolitan, or transnational identities.
Rules of (Dis)Order: Markets and States, Networks, and Hierarchies [MS]
This cluster concerns how the global is "ordered"—how the world we live in today is designed and arranged, constrained, and enabled. The most influential forms of ordering include the global economy and the nation-state system with its international institutions and interactions. Within these forms we encounter tensions between hierarchies and networks, state and non-state actors, flows and borders, rules and exceptions. This cluster aims to critically evaluate the assumptions, interests, and values behind the orders and alternatives that structure our field of action.
Co-Existence or Non-Existence: Rights, Justice, and Governance [RJG]
The success of development, the legitimacy of national policies, and the thin line between peace and war all rest on the question of justice—what is right, what is just, and for whom? This cluster examines the challenge of achieving global justice and the attendant attempts to justly govern global flows of people, goods, money, and information. Courses deal with questions such as: How are laws and norms changing under globalization? What contradictions and tensions are produced by human rights today? Is humanitarian intervention a moral imperative or an imperialist fantasy? Can wars be just? Can past injustice ever be adequately dealt with? Is there a global civil society that can provide a legitimate counter to corporate or state power?
Global Spaces: Urban, Media, Environment [GS]
This cluster focuses on three global spaces where The New School has special analytical strengths. Cities are indelibly local yet inescapably inscribed by global flows of money, people, and trade. Contemporary media confounds the scale between local and global while transforming our identities, perceptions, and reactions, as well as power relations. The environment knows no borders: global flows can result in local challenges, and local problems can have a global effect. All of these spaces are linked by the challenge of how we design our cities, our forms of information, and our relationship to the environment. Courses in this cluster link explicitly to cutting-edge work in design carried out at The New School.
Majoring in Global Studies
Bachelor's Program students can declare Global Studies as their major, or, with their advisor's permission, pursue a double major in Global Studies and Environmental Studies. Interested students should inquire about the program's plans for a five-year, combined bachelor's/master's option leading to a graduate degree in International Affairs, Media Studies, Economics, and other related disciplines.
Experience on the ground is an important aspect of Global Studies, and the major gives students the chance to apply their knowledge in real-world internships and fieldwork related to the global community in New York City or abroad. To this end, each student is required to demonstrate competency in a foreign language, complete fieldwork research or an internship, and focus their studies on a course cluster. The Global Studies major also offers unique opportunities for sharing experiences and coursework with existing programs in Urban Studies and Environmental Studies.
Global Studies Courses for Non-Majors
All Global Studies courses are open to Bachelor's Program students who are non-majors. For a list of these courses, including descriptions and registration details, see the Bachelor's Program course listing PDFs posted at Current Offerings.
For more information about the Global Studies curriculum and major, including news about upcoming events and courses, contact us at globalstudies@newschool.edu and check out our blog: www.nsglobal.info/.