Graduate Minor in
Development Studies & Social Change
ICGC Scholars take a total of three years of interdisciplinary seminars and workshops. They may apply these courses toward a free-standing Ph.D. minor in Development Studies and Social Change, or they may simply enroll in the courses as supplementary coursework. The following series of courses comprise the minor program.
DSSC Graduate Courses
Doctoral Research Workshop |
Scholarship and Public Responsibility (Spring 09) |
Approaches to Knowledge and Truth: Defining Ways of Knowing in Development Studies and Social Change - DSSC 8111.
This seminar introduces students to the challenges and advantages of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research in international and cross-cultural contexts. In discussing various "ways of knowing," emphasis is placed on concrete issues and methodological challenges facing interdisciplinary international studies to assist in preparing the ground for students’ subsequent research on social change in global and local contexts.
Scholarship and Public Responsibility - DSSC 8112.
This seminar addresses the responsibility of public engagement in academic work. Students will explore the common pursuits, the asymmetries of location and capabilities, and the transformative potential of dialogue and collaborative work between the University and the various local, national and transnational communities that it is committed to serving. In this seminar students will examine a range of themes relevant to public engagement, such as diverse practices of reading, writing and pedagogy, the privileged locations of knowledge, languages, strategies and tactics of civil society organizing, and the politics of collaborative work, in order to understand how to traverse and potentially transform the distinctions frequently drawn between academic and non-academic knowledge. Through the use of guest speakers invited by the course instructors, students will have the opportunity to meet with individuals, organizations and groups who are already participating in various political activities, social movements, art projects and civil society organizing. They will also develop individual and collective projects that will reflect their understanding of their public responsibility in academic learning and knowledge production
Doctoral Research Workshop in Development Studies and Social Change - DSSC 8211-8212 .
Students take this seminar the year prior to initiating dissertation research, which is typically in their third year. The course has two primary objectives. First, students receive guidance and feedback on writing grant proposals and developing dissertation topics in an interdisciplinary setting. Second, this seminar returns to the epistemological and methodological issues of interdisciplinary research and collaborative learning that were introduced in DSSC 8111 and 8112, to maintain them in focus while students conceptualize and articulate their dissertation topics. This is accomplished in part through specific skill-building sessoins focused on research methods and ethics, and also through reading and discussion on interdisciplinary research.
Topics in Development Studies and Social Change - DSSC 8310.
These seminars will focus on various specific topical issues in development studies and social change, such as environmental change, constructions of race and gender, social movements, urbanization, poverty, violence, humanitarianism, sustainable livelihoods, and transnational activism. The short-course format allows for more specific focus of topics while simultaneously increasing the range of topical foci available to students. One of the two seminars offered each fall semester will be jointly coordinated with faculty from the University of Western Cape (South Africa), and will involve DSSC students as well as students from UWC. UWC and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) have a reciprocal partnership funded by the Mellon Foundation which includes a course to be simultaneously taught at each institution with a collaborative component to develop deeper awareness of cross-cultural perspectives on the topic. Interactive television (ITV) and small proportion of web-based learning components, such as discussion forums for a deeper inquiry of course readings, will enable students to learn from one another as well as from their instructors.