Everything's connected.
We can start anywhere and go anywhere.
We will never know ALL the connections...
But we CAN know enough to get around.
(Dr. J.E.P. Butler - Historian)
We can start anywhere and go anywhere.
We will never know ALL the connections...
But we CAN know enough to get around.
(Dr. J.E.P. Butler - Historian)
This course is an Introduction to International Studies. We'll be pretty much "all over the map" in this class but the thing that will tie it all together is my desire to have you think about the world as it is today, with all of its problems, complexities and potential. And to think of your place in this world. Many of you may have come to St. Stephen's University because you want to "make a difference". That's great! I hope that this course - and your other courses at SSU - will help you to figure out just what it is that you want to change and how to go about doing it. It's complicated... but that's ok.
Photo by Kyle Jaster (2011) during an SSU Study Trip to Kenya.
Education is about transformation. If there's no transformation then there has been no real education. And learning isn't just about taking in information. Real learning is always a process - a wrestling with ideas and experiences and opinions. The classroom isn't a static environment - and it's not contained by the walls of the room where we meet.
My goal in this course is to have you really engaged - with the material, with me, with one another. We'll be learning together. Some of you may have taken a high school course on world issues and others may have already traveled to parts of the world that are pretty "needy". Some of you may have been involved in missions projects of one kind or another. Some of you may naturally think about issues like poverty, hunger, justice, environment, human rights, etc. And it's quite possible that some of you have never given these things much thought.
Whatever your starting point, I hope that this course will help you to think more deeply - to make connections - to deconstruct and then reconstruct some of your basic assumptions about how the world works.
SSU is a Christian university. I don't know what that means for each of you, but for me it means that faith matters in everything we do. Faith may be one of the things that you're deconstructing. No problem. Me too - constantly. I won't be imposing my "answers" on you because I find they're often tentative and sometimes fickle. But I will be expecting you to be honest as you figure out how what we're learning intersects with what you believe, and how what you believe may influence what you're learning.
This is an area of study that is constantly changing so expect to be flexible. There's lots of content and although I have a rough idea of what we'll be doing our schedule will be extremely open.
My goal in this course is to have you really engaged - with the material, with me, with one another. We'll be learning together. Some of you may have taken a high school course on world issues and others may have already traveled to parts of the world that are pretty "needy". Some of you may have been involved in missions projects of one kind or another. Some of you may naturally think about issues like poverty, hunger, justice, environment, human rights, etc. And it's quite possible that some of you have never given these things much thought.
Whatever your starting point, I hope that this course will help you to think more deeply - to make connections - to deconstruct and then reconstruct some of your basic assumptions about how the world works.
SSU is a Christian university. I don't know what that means for each of you, but for me it means that faith matters in everything we do. Faith may be one of the things that you're deconstructing. No problem. Me too - constantly. I won't be imposing my "answers" on you because I find they're often tentative and sometimes fickle. But I will be expecting you to be honest as you figure out how what we're learning intersects with what you believe, and how what you believe may influence what you're learning.
This is an area of study that is constantly changing so expect to be flexible. There's lots of content and although I have a rough idea of what we'll be doing our schedule will be extremely open.