Globalization and Its Discontents

3 units

Today, the heady promises of globalization appear to have failed us. The notion of global markets and global citizens seems to have remained at best, an ideal. Meanwhile the world's majority has witnessed a staggering decline in education, nutrition, health and even physical mobility. Nowhere have these developments passed unquestioned: from the rise of the so-called Maoist insurgency in India to the Occupy movement in the US, people and especially the youth have expressed their outrage in creative and unconventional ways. This course plots the long and necessarily violent history of forging global interconnections. The lens for our analysis will be India, South Asia and their relationship with the United States. We will approach a range of novels, films and popular cultural artifacts as we build our own understanding of the nature, critique and promise of globalization.