International Studies receives
Ford Foundation grant
Emory has received a $106,200 grant from the Ford Foundation's "Crossing
Borders: Revitalizing Area Studies" program to support advanced training
and research in comparative and area studiesprograms that study
specific regions of the world.
Organized by the Center for International Studies (ECIS) and drawing
upon Emory's well-established area and international studies programs, the
cornerstones of this effort are working groups devoted to specific international
and comparative research topics. "This problem-centered focus will
encourage fresh approaches to area studies and provide faculty and students
with state-of-the-art research overviews," said ECIS Director Ivan
Karp. The graduate school and the Provost's Fund for Internationalization
will provide additional support.
The first two interdisciplinary working groups will study comparative
industrialization and post-colonial cultures-for example, how different
parts of the world have managed problems associated with industrialization
and global economic change, and the role of culture and politics in states
that are no longer colonies but still struggle with the consequences of
colonial rule. Much of the best work on these topics has been written by
scholars from the Third World who will visit Emory under the new program,
according to Karp.
Over the last decade, changes in the global landscape have forced scholars
to rethink the complex relationships among nations and regions and between
area studies-based knowledge and discipline-based approaches. "Many
of the intellectual tools that international and area studies specialists
used in the Cold War era now seem inadequate to the task of understanding
the sudden changes many regions of the world have experienced," Karp
said. "The methods of any one discipline and the historical experience
of any one region can provide only part of the analytical framework needed
to understand new structures and relationships."
The working groups will conduct an interdisciplinary graduate seminar
and course, develop new undergraduate courses and provide small grants to
bring in international speakers to work with students learning lesser-taught
languages. They also will organize a joint conference for fall 1998 titled
"The Culture of Consumption" to explore the impact of industrial
growth and global economics at the points of sale and use, rather than solely
at the points of production.
The comparative industrialization group will study the different ways
regions adapt to globalization and industrial restructuring and the conflicts
created as a by-product of these processes. Examples are non-Westerners'
common perception of globalization as "Americanization," while
plant closings in the United States have stirred debate about citizenship
in a global economy.
The post-colonial culture group will look at the different ways post-colonial
culture has reproduced colonial politics and economics. The group also will
examine the role of the state in post-colonial societies, new forms of civil
society and the ways in which thinking about the post-colonial world has
been expressed in art, literature and other fields. Each of the working
groups will be composed of faculty and students from both the humanities
and the social sciences.
The ECIS program was among 30 selected from a pool of more than 200 applicants.
These 30 will be eligible to apply for the second phase of the Ford program,
which will make more substantial awards.
-Deb Hammacher
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