Global Studies 205: Building Blocks of Global Studies: Overview of Approaches, Concepts, and Issues (Rev. C1)

Welcome to Building Blocks of Global Studies: Approaches, Concepts, and Issues (GLST 205), a three-credit required course for GLST at Athabasca University. Global Studies is the study of transnational processes, or "globalization," that engages interdisciplinary insights from fields such as sociology, history, human geography, political science, cultural studies, and many more. This interdisciplinary approach is necessary to increase the depth and the breadth of understanding of the complex concept of globalization, which is used as a description, a process, and an ideology. Therefore, the course includes a broad overview of the field of Global Studies; an introduction to the tools for understanding global issues; an examination of the core issues of Global Studies and the agents of change in the world; an overview of the various movements resisting global economic policies; and a critical retrospective on the state of the world.

GLST 308: Americas: An Introduction to Latin America and the Caribbean (Rev. C5)

GLST 308 explores the political, economic, and social dynamics that have shaped Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the processes that are moulding its future. Building on a ten-hour series of television broadcasts, Americas brings to life a startlingly diverse region that encompasses great wealth and desperate poverty, countries as tiny as Jamaica and as enormous as Brazil, with democratic and authoritarian governments, and a complex, multicultural heritage.

Global Studies 381/History 381: Modern China (Rev. C1)

Welcome to Global Studies 381/History 381: Modern China, a three-credit, senior-level course that covers the history of China from the collapse of the Qing dynasty to the era of Deng Xiaoping. The final unit surveys minorities, the Tibet question, and the Chinese diaspora. The course is centred around Jonathan D. Spence’s textbook, The Search for Modern China. In the six units of the course, we consider major events such as the Hundred Day Reforms (1898), the Boxer Uprising (1900), the 1911 Revolution, the warlord era, the Sino-Japanese War, the founding of the People’s Republic, and the creation of another China on the island of Taiwan. As you work through the course, you will gain a basic understanding of modern developments in China in the context of its own historical past and from a Canadian and global perspective.

Global Studies 382/History 382: Contemporary China (Rev. C1)

Global Studies 382/History 382: Contemporary China is a three-credit, senior-level course which is designed to provide a thematic discussion of a number of major topics in post-Maoist China. Particular emphasis is placed on the dynamic but paradoxical impacts of globalization and modernization on various aspects of Chinese society. Each of the 10 units of the course begins with a historical overview of events that have transpired since the 1949 revolution, which provide students with background knowledge necessary to understand China’s post-reform years.

GLST 395/INTR 395/POEC 395: Political Economy of Development: People, Processes, and Policies (Rev. C4)

GLST 395/INTR 395/POEC 395—Political Economy of Development: People, Processes, and Policies, is a three-credit, senior-level course provides an overview of theories of development and their indigenous critiques. It is focused on the regions that comprise the Global South, including Latin America and the Caribbean; Africa and the Middle East; and South and Southeast Asia.