MODUL900MB Modular Undergraduate: Interdisciplinary Studies Centre,
BA L903 Global Studies,
BA L904 Global Studies (including year abroad),
BA L905 Global Studies (Including Placement Year),
BA L908 Global Studies (Including Foundation Year and Year Abroad),
BA LR04 Global Studies and Modern Languages (Including Year Abroad),
BA L910 Global Studies with Politics,
BA L911 Global Studies with Politics (Including year abroad),
BA L912 Global Studies with Politics (Including Placement Year),
BA L913 Global Studies with Politics (Including Foundation Year),
BA L914 Global Studies with Human Rights,
BA L916 Global Studies with Human Rights (Including Foundation Year),
BA L917 Global Studies with Human Rights (Including Placement Year),
BA L918 Global Studies with Human Rights (Including Year Abroad),
BA L933 Global Studies with Business Management,
BA L934 Global Studies with Business Management (Including Foundation Year),
BA L935 Global Studies with Business Management (Including Placement Year),
BA L936 Global Studies with Business Management (Including Year Abroad),
BA R104 Global Studies and Language Studies,
BA R105 Global Studies and Language Studies (Including Foundation Year),
BA L994 Global Studies with Latin American Studies,
BA L995 Global Studies with Latin American Studies (Including Foundation Year),
BA L996 Global Studies with Latin American Studies (including Placement Year),
BA L997 Global Studies with Latin American Studies (including Year Abroad),
BA L990 Global Studies and Latin American Studies,
BA L991 Global Studies and Latin American Studies (Including Foundation Year),
BA L992 Global Studies and Latin American Studies (including Placement Year),
BA L993 Global Studies and Latin American Studies (including Year Abroad),
BA C900 Global Studies with Sustainability,
BA C901 Global Studies with Sustainability (Including Foundation Year),
BA C902 Global Studies with Sustainability (including Placement Year),
BA C903 Global Studies with Sustainability (including Year Abroad),
BA V5L5 Philosophy, Ethics and Sustainability,
BA V5L6 Philosophy, Ethics and Sustainability (Including Foundation Year),
BA V5L7 Philosophy, Ethics and Sustainability (Including Placement Year),
BA V5L8 Philosophy, Ethics and Sustainability (Including Year Abroad)
This team-taught capstone module explores a number of real-world challenges currently confronting the globe from an interdisciplinary perspective. Through guest lectures from experts in different disciplines, students will be presented with a range of global challenges. In the discussion seminars and in their assessments, students will analyse historical causes and consider strategies to tackle particular challenges.
Global Challenges in Interdisciplinary Perspective: Water Wars, Water Cultures
Access to water is one of the most urgent global challenges facing us today. Vital for health and well-being, as well as integral to indigenous cultures and industrial processes, water is a threatened commons and contested commodity. In this module, we will explore global and local case studies that highlight challenges of scarcity, contamination, privatization, and climate change, and the cultural importance of bodies of water for diverse communities. We will examine water-related problems, such as economic and urban development, grassroots activism, political conflict, community relations, heritage and well-being. The module will engage with local rivers, such as the River Colne which borders the campus of the University of Essex.
The module is taught by academics from across the University, whose contributions encompass a wide range of fields including policy-making, politics, law, social sciences, the arts and sciences. It will also involve meetings with stakeholders and organizations in the wider community.
This methodology is designed to encourage you to develop a holistic and informed approach to research, project development, teamwork and inspirational leadership that will prepare you for the world beyond your degree.
The aims of the module are:
1 To provide students with a grounding in the challenges facing the globe today;
2 To explore issues related to global challenges and be able to relate those issues to the relevant political and social contexts;
3 To stimulate students to develop skills in written communication through the capstone project and through oral communication and debate in seminars;
4 To encourage students to think and write in both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary ways
By the end of this module you should:
1. be able to demonstrate a familiarity with, and an understanding of the material considered on the module, specifically the challenges facing the globe;
2. be able to draw connections between a diverse range of written forms produced in different geopolitical contexts;
3. be able to distinguish critically between different methodological and disciplinary approaches to the issues in question;
4. be able to write in an informed, critical and argumentative manner on the material covered by the module;
5. be able to define the task in which they are engaged, process large volumes of information and exclude what is irrelevant;
6. be able to compare and evaluate different arguments and assess the limitations of their own position or procedure, thinking critically and constructively;
7. be able to write and present verbally a succinct and precise account of positions, arguments, and their presuppositions and implications;
8. be able to be sensitive to the positions of others and communicate their own views in ways that are accessible to them;
9. be able to think ‘laterally’ and creatively (i.e. to explore interesting connections and possibilities, and to present these clearly rather than as vague hunches);
Among the topics covered by the module are indigenous struggles over water rights at Standing Rock; legislative innovations that provide legal personhood to rivers; grassroots responses to hydropower and industrial development; social movements and art-based activism in response to dam building; the importance of fishing traditions to local Essex identity. For final year Global Studies students, we recommend combining this module with the Spring term 15-credit dissertation module CS831 or CS301: Dangerous Ideas: Manifestos as Social Criticism.
There will be a one hour lecture and one-hour class/seminar each week. There will also be a Reading Week when no teaching will take place, exact week to be confirmed.
This module does not appear to have a published bibliography for this year.