Global Studies

Starting in fall 2020, students will be able to major in Global Studies.  UD has offered a minor in Global Studies since 2014, and the newly created major enables students to choose it as their main area of study.

Global Studies majors choose between four concentrations: Environment, Health, Migration, and World Cultures.  Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the Global Studies major lends itself to double majoring or minoring in relating disciplines.

Global Studies programs emerged in the 1990s as a reaction to debates about global connectedness and the cultural effects of globalization and global forces.  Whether students choose the Global Studies major or a Global Studies minor, the curriculum is designed to enable them to succeed in an increasingly globalized world by exposing them to the political and cultural foundations of global issues.  The program prepares students for graduate programs, as well as for careers in government and international business or in international health, humanitarian, environmental, tourism, development, and other types of non-governmental agencies.

All students take Core Courses in Anthropology, Geography, History, Political Science, and Women and Gender Studies as well as the "ARSC300 Issues in Global Studies" lecture series and two courses taught in a world language.  They select one of the four Concentrations listed below, each including one or two required courses and a wide variety of elective courses.

​Students who choose this concentration will study the dependence, interactions and impact of humans on the physical environment and vice versa, including changes in these dynamics across time. It acknowledges the centrality of environmental issues to international relations, global politics, and debates relating to the sustainability of human societies in the face of growing environmental crises.  Course options cover diverse but inter-related topics, such as environmental ethics, environmental anthropology, the politics and economics of the Global South (comprising Asia, Africa, and Latin America), human vulnerability to natural disasters and climate change, natural resource management, and the history of human-environmental interaction. Humanistic, natural science, and social science disciplines—including Anthropology, Ecology, English, Geography, History, Philosophy, Political Science, and Sociology—offer a range of courses relevant to this exploration.

The UD course catalog for the Global Studies Major - Environment Concentration can be found here.

The courses in the global health concentration will help students develop an understanding of the influences of culture, politics, environment, and nutrition on health practices and healthcare delivery throughout the world. Not only does disease know no borders but the health and well-being of individuals and populations often have multilevel, multifactorial, biological and social determinants influenced by global politics, economics and environmental linkages. Global health is a highly interdisciplinary field that focuses on health issues that transcend national boundaries with the aim of ensuring health equity among and within nations.

The UD course catalog for the Global Studies Major - Health Concentration can be found here.

​This concentration will familiarize students with the significance of migration for the formation of particular cultural groups, political structures, and economic processes. Migration is a necessarily interdisciplinary topic that looks at the oft interlinked movement of people, plants, cultures, and ideas across the modern historical period.  Courses will be drawn from Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Political Science and International Relations, and History, among others. They will examine all aspects of migration, from voluntary to forced, from new cosmopolitan mobilities to mass movements of refugees. This concentration will help students interrogate migration in relation to human rights, the outsourcing of border control, and the global imaginary that informs decisions about how and where to migrate. 

The UD course catalog for the Global Studies Major - Migration Concentration can be found here.

This concentration considers cultures, customary worldviews, beliefs, social norms and practices, and material traits of social groups, in comparison and conversation with those of other societies around the world.  Students who choose this concentration will analyze ways in which local, regional, and national cultures are produced and transmitted through generations, shaping civilizations and global narratives and interacting with each other, by studying cultural artifacts, patterns, and forms as evidenced through social and cultural research into lived experiences of people within those cultures, as well as expressed through literature, film, the visual arts, digital cultures, and musical and theatrical performance.

The UD course catalog for the Global Studies Major - World Cultures Concentration can be found here.

The basic requirements for the Global Studies Minor and Global Studies Minor with Language are outlined below.  

Global Studies

The required core courses in the Global Studies minor are:

• ARSC 300 Issues in Global Studies (1 credit)
• ANTH 101 Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (3 credits)
• POSC 270 Introduction to Comparative Politics (3 credits)

Global Studies Minor students must also take THREE elective courses (9 credits) from ONE of the following tracks:

• Track 1: Global Systems: History, Politics, and Culture
• Track 2: Human Rights and Security

Total Credits: 16

For more details about course requirements and elective course tracks, please refer to the UD online catalog.

Global Studies with Language

Students who choose the Global Studies with Language Minor must take the three required core courses:

• ARSC 300 Issues in Global Studies (1 credit)
• ANTH 101 Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (3 credits)
• POSC 270 Introduction to Comparative Politics (3 credits)

Students must also take TWO elective courses (6 credits) from ONE of the following elective tracks:

• Track 1: Global Systems: History, Politics, and Culture
• Track 2: Human Rights and Security

Finally, students must take TWO courses (6 credits) at the 200-level or above taught in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish

Total credits: 19

Important Notes for Global Studies Minors (with and without Language)

• All courses must have a grade of C- or better to count toward the minor.
• Students cannot count more than 6 credits from their major towards the minor.
• Students who participate in a Study Abroad program can count one of the courses taken abroad towards the minor.
• Students who register in a class associated with an internship program or undergraduate research program, when the internship or research have a global content, can offer up to three credits towards the minor.
• The combination of Study Abroad participation, internships, and undergraduate research cannot exceed six credits towards the minor.

For more details about course requirements and elective course tracks, please refer to the UD online catalog.

Dr. Cynthia Schmidt-Cruz

Director, Center for Global and Area Studies

Professor of Spanish and Portuguese

207 Jastak-Burgess Hall

Newark, DE 19716

csc@udel.edu