Stanford Global Studies announces recipients of course innovation awards

Stanford Global Studies (SGS) has awarded five Stanford faculty members with Course Innovation Awards, which support courses that creatively offer ways for students to learn about topics of regional and global importance.

Two courses will be certified through the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education Requirement (COLLEGE) program. This new program—which requires first-year students to take courses focused on the themes of Civic Engagement, Liberal Education, and Global Engagement—engages students in a purposeful study of liberal education and challenges them to examine their roles as global citizens in complex, diverse societies.

This year’s Course Innovation Award recipients include:

Krish Seetah, associate professor of anthropology, will teach COLLEGE 104: The Meat We Eat, which will be offered in spring quarter. This course takes a global perspective on the human facets driving meat consumption. Using historical, ecological, and anthropological material, students will look at the ways meat eating has fundamentally shaped our environment, our health, and our culture.

Soledad Artiz Prillaman, assistant professor of political science, and Saad Gulzar, assistant professor of political science, will teach COLLEGE 105: The Politics of Development, which will be offered in spring quarter. This course examines foundational reasons for why some countries remain poor and why inequality persists today. In addition to answering the why question, we will also examine how practitioners, policymakers, and academics have tackled global development challenges, where they have met success, and where failure has provided key lessons for the future.

David Cohen, WSD Handa Professor in Human Rights and International Justice, professor of classics, and director of the Stanford Center for Human Rights and International Justice, will teach GLOBAL 125: Human Rights in an Age of Great Power Rivalry, War, and Political Transformation, which will be offered in winter quarter. The course will explore the humanitarian dimension and consequences of war, conflict, and political transformation through a series of case studies.

Usha Iyer, assistant professor of film and media studies, will teach GLOBAL 193: History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinema Around the World, which will be offered in spring quarter. Through film and video from Kenya, Hong Kong, India, the Dominican Republic, South Korea, Spain, Palestine, Argentina, the U.S. (Black, indigenous cinemas, for instance), South Africa, Colombia etc., this course will engage with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world.

Several courses that have received Course Innovation Awards in the past will be offered again in the 2021-22 academic year, including:

GLOBAL 135: Around the World in Ten Films
Pavle Levi, Winter 2022

This is an introductory-level course about the cinema as a global language. We will undertake a comparative study of select historical and contemporary aspects of international cinema and explore a range of themes pertaining to the social, cultural, and political diversity of the world.

HUMRTS 108: Advanced Spanish Service-Learning: Migration, Asylum, and Human Rights at the Border
Vivian Brates, Fall 2021 and Winter 2022

Students will have the opportunity to apply their advanced Spanish language skills and knowledge of the U.S. immigration detention system from the class as volunteers with immigrant rights advocacy organizations. Students will be trained to staff a hotline to help monitor detention conditions in more than 200 immigrant prisons, report abuse, expose dehumanizing conditions, and request support on behalf of detainees and their loved ones.

HUMRTS 114: Human Rights Practice and Challenges in Southeast Asia: Issues, Fieldwork, Career Paths
David Cohen, Spring 2022

This course aims to address student interest in the practice of human rights both from the individual perspective, particularly regarding a variety of professional career paths, as well as from institutional perspectives. 

LATINAM 177A: Mapping Poverty, Colonialism, and Nation Building in Latin America
Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, Fall 2021

This course is an introduction to the mapping of colonial and early independent Latin America, as a lens through which students may learn about the process of colonization, state building, and the legacies of those processes on poverty and underdevelopment today.

POLISCI 46N: Contemporary African Politics
David Laitin, Spring 2022

Africa has lagged behind the rest of the developing world in terms of three consequential outcomes: economic development, the establishment of social order through effective governance, and the consolidation of democracy. This course seeks to identify the historical and political sources accounting for this lag, to provide extensive case study and statistical material to understand what sustains it, and to examine recent examples of success pointing to a more hopeful future.