GLOA 400: Global Affairs Capstone

This course examines Europe’s relationship to globalization. We will focus on multiple aspects of this relationship. First, we will address the expansion of Europe through coercive processes such as colonialism and the way European countries imposed their languages, ideologies, and institutions on the peoples of Africa and elsewhere. Second, we will also address how European countries such as France continuously deploy both their soft power (e.g. French movies,educational programs) and hard power (e.g. French interventions in Rwanda, Cote d’Ivoire, and elsewhere) to extend their influence. Third, we will address the political and cultural construction of “Europe” culminating with the European Union and arrangements such as the euro and The Common Security and Defence Policy. Finally, we will address how different European countries have responded (and contributed to) the three global phenomena of Covid-19, the migration/refugee crisis centered on the Mediterranean, and the rise of authoritarian populism (leading to Brexit as well as increasing tension within Europe as governments such as that of Viktor Orbán has, to critics, entrenched power in non-democratic ways). We will read scholarship from across the social sciences (anthropology, political science, geography, sociology, international law, and so on) and focus on countries ranging from the UK to France, from Italy to the Nordics as well as the European Union