Apply Today! Undergraduate final deadline is August 1
—Metro State will observe Summer Hours May 22–July 25: On Fridays, services will be virtual only, and buildings will be closed Fridays and Saturdays (except the Library will be open Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m-6 p.m.).
In observance of the Independence Day weekend, all Metro State University buildings are closed July 3, 4, and 5. University buildings and services resume regular operations on Monday, July 6.
The Global Studies BA is an ideal course of study for students interested in:
Courses in Global Studies will explore:
The Global Studies major combines courses in Anthropology and Sociology, Geography, and Political Science, as well as the option of approved upper-division electives with a global focus in other College of Liberal Arts departments. Students in the Global Studies major learn fundamental skills in social science research and conduct their own research to complete their degrees.
The Global Studies BA program offers graduates valuable training that can be applied to professional work in several fields, such as:
The Global Studies major prepares students who wish to explore international careers or work with groups of diverse backgrounds.
Graduates will be able to:
Once you’re admitted as an undergraduate student and have met any further admission requirements your chosen program may have, you may declare a major or declare an optional minor.
Apply to Metro State: Start the journey toward your Global Studies BA now. Learn about the steps to enroll or, if you have questions about what Metro State can offer you, request information, visit campus or chat with an admissions counselor.
At least half of the credits required for the major must be completed at Metro State University. Students must earn a grade of C- or above in all major courses. Student should select lower division electives and upper division electives in consultation with an advisor. Transfer courses may be applicable to major requirements. The university's degree audit will specify transfer courses that are directly equivalent to major requirements. Other transfer courses must be approved by a faculty advisor in the department.
Students must take GEO 201. In addition, students may take up to 7 additional credits in courses related to global studies. Students may select ECON 200 as a lower division elective. See an advisor for more information.
This course introduces students to the concepts and tools used by geographers to think critically about the relationship between humans and their environment. Geographers use this focus to answer contemporary questions of political, economic, social and environmental concern. This course is designed to help students understand the role human and physical geographies play in shaping individuals' experiences and understanding of the world.
Select two of the following courses, no more than one course from any one discipline:
What is gender? How can we understand differences in gender and sexuality? Through the perspective of cultural anthropology and sociology, students examine how gender is perceived and realized in a range of human societies. Discussions on the biological/cultural determinants of gender are considered. Case studies explore how gender varies cross-culturally and historically and is related to social power. Students engage with contemporary debates surrounding such themes as marriage, family, human rights, inequalities, and sexuality.
Full course description for Gender in Sociocultural Perspective
This course draws on key concepts from social theory to examine select social movements through a global perspective. Using case studies of movements that focus on such central themes as democracy, human rights, and economic justice, the course will explore how movements begin, the development of ideology and world view, and contrasting approaches to organization, tactics, strategy and leadership. On a broader level, students will examine the relationship between tradition and change, and movement and counter-movement, in order to evaluate how social movements have influenced-and continue to influence-the world we live in.
Full course description for Social Movements in Global Perspective
The dramatic population movements globally and into the U.S. over recent decades of people fleeing violence or seeking viable livelihoods leads to many complex questions concerning migration. This course explores contemporary migration through an anthropological perspective into the lived experiences of refugees and immigrants who come to the U.S., and gives particular attention to immigrant groups residing locally. Students will gain empirical and theoretical bases of social science research to place migration experiences in sociocultural, economic and political context and to critically assess assumptions about refugees and migrants found in discourses on immigration.
Full course description for Anthropology of Immigrants and Refugees
Crises of Democracy explores the modern paradox of a simultaneous global democratic resurgence and crisis. It examines fundamental concepts such as: direct and representative democracy; the roles of bureaucracy and citizen participation; power, equality, and freedom; the relationship between democracy and capitalism, liberal and illiberal democracy, and the role of revolt or revolution in a democracy. The course also explores contemporary issues including: the recent rise of authoritarianism, multiracial democracy, gender and racial discriminations, and global challenges such as climate change, migration, and poverty. Students will learn to evaluate news sources¿ reporting on current events and the contemporary discourse of democracy.
This course examines critical global issues and the organizations and institutions that are attempting to address them. Drawing on concepts from political science and international relations, students explore such issues as human rights, the global environment, violence within and between nations, and the gap between "have" and "have not" nations. The course investigates the response of the United States to these issues as well as the effectiveness of formal international organizations like the United Nations and emerging transnational citizen organization. Classroom inquiry is supplemented by field experience and investigation.
This course draws on key concepts from social theory to examine select social movements through a global perspective. Using case studies of movements that focus on such central themes as democracy, human rights, and economic justice, the course will explore how movements begin, the development of ideology and world view, and contrasting approaches to organization, tactics, strategy and leadership. On a broader level, students will examine the relationship between tradition and change, and movement and counter-movement, in order to evaluate how social movements have influenced-and continue to influence-the world we live in.
Full course description for Social Movements in Global Perspective
ANSO 304 and POL 304 are cross-listed sections of the same course. For cross-listed courses, students may choose one section, but not both.
All social science majors must complete all four core courses (SSCI 300, SSCI 311, SSCI 411, and SSCI 451/452). Sequencing: SSCI 300, SSCI 311, SSCI 411, and SSCI 451 or SSCI 452. Social science majors may take one core course at a time. Alternatively, majors may take SSCI 300 and SSCI 311 concurrently, or they may take SSCI 311 and SSCI 411 concurrently. SSCI 300, 311, and 411 must be completed before beginning a capstone class (SSCI 451 or 452).
FIRST:
Most of us are only dimly aware of how politics, culture, and society influence, and often coerce, our daily lives. The calling of a social scientist is to help us make these invisible social structures visible. In this course, students develop the skills and tools to discover, analyze, and interpret these obscure social processes. Ideally, this knowledge will have a liberating effect on their individual lives. Students will also perceive how their civic and ethical participation can change politics, culture, and society, as well as themselves.
THEN:
This course provides an introduction to the basic concepts of social science research. Students learn and implement a variety of research methods, and critically reflect on the relationship of these methods to philosophical traditions within social science. The courses examines two approaches to social science research, quantitative and qualitative, and the unique contribution of each approach for understanding social life. Experiential activities enhance classroom learning.
Full course description for Research Methods in Social Science
THEN:
Social scientists study the world so that we may take informed action to solve social problems. In this class, students explore how theory contributes to solving social problems. Students will learn how theorists identify and analyze social problems, as well as offer potential solutions. Special emphasis will be placed on some of the most contested and controversial social problems of our time, such as neoliberalism and its role in deepening economic inequality, climate collapse, and the erosion of democracy globally. Students will also explore issues such as identity politics and oppression based on identity categories, which may include race, gender, sexuality, ability, and nationality. Students will consider how theory helps us to envision and pursue a more just, humane, and sustainable world.
THEN, EITHER:
Social scientists investigate the patterns of human interactions and then seek to interpret, explain and communicate human behavior. This seminar is designed to provide a final, integrating experience for students with a social science major. Seminar participants complete a senior project that demonstrates an ability to design a study, collect new or existing data, analyze those findings and communicate the results.
OR:
The social sciences have been shaping our understanding of the human condition for 175 years. Students will be comparing and evaluating ideas that continue to engage and perplex thoughtful public intellectuals. The capstone project involves researching an idea that remains disputable. The goal of a student's thesis is an independent interpretation of a specific concept.
Students will complete a one-credit portfolio in their final semester. The portfolio will include assignments from each of the core courses and elective courses in the major, in addition to reflective essays. Students will work with a faculty member in their major to complete the portfolio as a one-credit SDIS.
Student-designed independent studies give Metro State students the opportunity to plan their own study. This type of independent learning strategy can be useful because it allows students: to study a subject in more depth, at a more advanced level; to pursue a unique project that requires specialized study; to draw together several knowledge areas or interests into a specialized study; to test independent learning capabilities and skills; or to use special learning resources in the community, taking advantage of community education opportunities which, in themselves, would not yield a full college competence. Students should contact their academic advisor for more information.
Full course description for Global Studies Student Designed Independent Studies
Students will complete upper-division electives in global studies to reach 40 credits in the major. Students may choose from the options below.
What is gender? How can we understand differences in gender and sexuality? Through the perspective of cultural anthropology and sociology, students examine how gender is perceived and realized in a range of human societies. Discussions on the biological/cultural determinants of gender are considered. Case studies explore how gender varies cross-culturally and historically and is related to social power. Students engage with contemporary debates surrounding such themes as marriage, family, human rights, inequalities, and sexuality.
Full course description for Gender in Sociocultural Perspective
This course draws on key concepts from social theory to examine select social movements through a global perspective. Using case studies of movements that focus on such central themes as democracy, human rights, and economic justice, the course will explore how movements begin, the development of ideology and world view, and contrasting approaches to organization, tactics, strategy and leadership. On a broader level, students will examine the relationship between tradition and change, and movement and counter-movement, in order to evaluate how social movements have influenced-and continue to influence-the world we live in.
Full course description for Social Movements in Global Perspective
This course examines sociological and anthropological approaches to religion in relation to the environment, individual life cycle, social order and relations, and culture change. Students examine theoretical constructs and methods and their relation to a variety of religious beliefs and practices in the United States and globally.
Starting from the premise that emotions don't occur in a socio-cultural vacuum, this course asks: How do cultures and societies shape and influence the experience and expression of emotions? Anthropological and sociological course materials on studies ranging from Bali to Brazil, from Egypt to the U.S. will explore many dimensions of emotions, including: the socialization of emotions; norms governing ways fear, anger, sadness, joy, distress, empathy and more are manifested, understood and treated in diverse cultures; how social, economic and political climates affect emotional experience.
Full course description for Exploring Emotions in World Cultures and Societies
What does the intensifying global circulation of ideas, people, capital, goods and practices across national borders mean for communities, cultures, and identities in different parts of the world? As anthropologist Anna Tsing puts it: how are people, cultures, things, and ideas remade as they circulate? This course explores today's increasingly interconnected and mobile world through the fields of anthropology and sociology. The course examines challenges of globalization, such as forced migrations, economic inequalities, climate change, pandemics. The course also considers valuable outcomes, from advances in social justice, to collaborations to solve global problems and creative multi-cultural interactions and productions. Students explore lived experiences of globalization, including their own.
Full course description for Globalization, Culture, and Society
This course takes an academic and practical approach to embodied intercultural communication in a globalized world. By understanding the scholarly theories of intercultural communication, students will investigate how to have ethical, appropriate, effective, and mindful intercultural interactions. Through multiple methods of learning, students will gain invaluable practice in navigating intercultural relationships in a variety of interactions (e.g. workplace; family;community, etc.). Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism, particularly as they relate to different communication interactions.
Full course description for Intermediate Intercultural Communication
This course critically analyzes global issues related to gender and sexuality from historical, social scientific and interdisciplinary perspectives. We will question commonly accepted notions of gender and sexuality and perceived social roles both historically and beyond the framework of U.S. and western societies. Areas to be explored include culture, economic development, education, government, health and law. Special attention will be given to such issues as human rights and public activism. The class will engage in understanding gender and sexuality within the contexts of shifting local and global power dynamics and as necessarily interconnected with race, ethnicity, class, and (neo) colonialism.
This course examines the work of contemporary African films with particular emphasis on the continuities and disruptions of Black cultures across transnational lines. The course studies a wide range of expressive possibilities, from analyses of African nations¿ legacies of colonization to art house visionaries, from fun comedies celebrating romance to slice-of-life realism. We pay significant attention to African films as political, aesthetic, and anti-racist practice. All works are in English, English translation, and/or with English subtitles.
This rich, interdisciplinary course studies how popular and classical artistic genres (such as painting, sculpture, installations, music, literature, dance, film, digital media, photography, happenings, cartoons, criticism, theories, etc.) shape our understanding of and discussions about environmental issues. We examine how artists from across the world have sought to use, recreate, idealize, manipulate, mar, intervene in, and affect the environment and public attitudes toward the environment. Key critical theories informing environmental art will be covered (e.g., ecocriticism, environmental racism, indigenous activism, animal rights, radical plant studies, global ecofeminism, the Anthropocene, apocalypse, poverty, religion, etc.). This course has a community engagement element.
The course surveys a variety of Indigenous oral and written narrative expressions (for example, bilingual texts and pictographic texts) from different regions, including Dakota, Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, and Potawatomi communities, as well as a possible inclusion of First Nations and Métis narratives. Students will explore themes and concepts central to Indigenous individuals, groups, and communities with a culturally-,historically-, and futuristically-informed analytical approach to literary study. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism.
Full course description for Native American Oral and Written Narratives
This course examines Asian and Asian diasporic literatures written in or translated to English. Students will analyze how these literatures have contributed to and transformed the study of English in a global frame. Students will investigate how Asian and Asian diasporic literature emerges from specific cultural, historical, national, global and American multiethnic contexts and demonstrate how ¿Asia¿ is itself a distortion of a broad region, largely produced from a western imperial imagination. Topics that may be studied in relation to literary production, include but are not limited to, gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, language, immigration, global migrant labor, citizenship, imperialism, as well as Asian indigenous histories. All texts will be in English or English translation.
Full course description for Asian and Asian Diasporic Literatures
This course examines contemporary literatures by African and African diasporic writers. Students will identify and compare the diversity of African and African diasporic literatures to critique and challenge monolithic understandings of Africa and the African diaspora. As students deepen their understanding of the construction of ¿Africa¿ and the African diaspora, we will distinguish the various ways these literatures reflect and innovate traditional narrative practices and Western literary forms. Finally, students will apply relevant socio-political and literary scholarship about literatures from the continent and the diaspora to literary analysis. Topics that may be studied in relation to literary production include but are not limited to, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, language, nationalism, anti-colonial resistance, decolonization, and globalization. All texts will be in English or English translation.
Full course description for African and African Diasporic Literatures
This course examines world literatures from regions (e.g. Latin and Central America, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Caribbean) previously described as "Third World." Students analyze literatures that emerge from, reflect, and respond to geopolitical phenomena that have produced the "Global South," namely colonization, globalization, slavery, indigenous dispossession, and displacement that continue to inform global North-South relations. In addition, students explore how literatures of the Global South offer creative responses and resistances to the violent imperialisms of the Global North and represent transformative Global South identities, movements, and solidarities. All required reading will be in English. Geographic emphasis of literature will vary by semester.
This course investigates the theory and practice of citizenship in local communities, the United States and the world. Students draw on core concepts from political science to explore contrasting ideas about citizenship and the political, economic and cultural dimensions of critical issues facing the global community. Classroom inquiry is supplemented by field experiences and investigation.
This course draws on key concepts from social theory to examine select social movements through a global perspective. Using case studies of movements that focus on such central themes as democracy, human rights, and economic justice, the course will explore how movements begin, the development of ideology and world view, and contrasting approaches to organization, tactics, strategy and leadership. On a broader level, students will examine the relationship between tradition and change, and movement and counter-movement, in order to evaluate how social movements have influenced-and continue to influence-the world we live in.
Full course description for Social Movements in Global Perspective
This course considers how violence is used systematically by organized political and social actors and how the use of violence by such actors responds strategically to competition over power and resources. It considers violence both as an effect of or response to status quo structures of power and economic inequality. It also considers how various actors use violence as an attempt to maintain or change the status quo. It approaches these questions using political economy and game theoretic methods, with an emphasis on defining and testing hypotheses about the use of violence.
Crises of Democracy explores the modern paradox of a simultaneous global democratic resurgence and crisis. It examines fundamental concepts such as: direct and representative democracy; the roles of bureaucracy and citizen participation; power, equality, and freedom; the relationship between democracy and capitalism, liberal and illiberal democracy, and the role of revolt or revolution in a democracy. The course also explores contemporary issues including: the recent rise of authoritarianism, multiracial democracy, gender and racial discriminations, and global challenges such as climate change, migration, and poverty. Students will learn to evaluate news sources¿ reporting on current events and the contemporary discourse of democracy.
This course examines critical global issues and the organizations and institutions that are attempting to address them. Drawing on concepts from political science and international relations, students explore such issues as human rights, the global environment, violence within and between nations, and the gap between "have" and "have not" nations. The course investigates the response of the United States to these issues as well as the effectiveness of formal international organizations like the United Nations and emerging transnational citizen organization. Classroom inquiry is supplemented by field experience and investigation.
Understanding today's world and how nations interact requires some degree of awareness of different religious traditions. This course is an introduction to selected religious traditions and cultures through exploring the history of different religions, reading of classic texts and examination of ways of being religious in a variety of traditions. Religions studied may include Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism and Shamanistic/Indigenous traditions.