The Department of Global Studies is a community of researchers, students, and teachers committed to furthering our understanding of the rich cultural, artistic, social, and linguistic diversity of the global community. We strive to be a welcoming and inclusive department and to promote diversity in our course curricula, in the students that we serve, and in the faculty and staff that we employ. While there is always more work to do to live up to our departmental and University goals of being a radically welcoming institution, our hope is that we can continue to make constant progress in that direction, and we aim to consider questions of equity and decolonization in our decision-making processes.
Courses
All of our course offerings focus on global languages, arts, and relations. Our particular efforts to decolonize our understandings of the globe and support the expansion of equity, diversity, and inclusion within our courses include the development of the following courses and course materials.
COMPLIT 365: Literatures and Cultures of the Americas:
Recent subtitles: Families in the Borderlands (Fall 2020), Intersections of Disability and Gender (Spring 2022)
FRENCH 431/731: Seminar in Literature of the Francophone World: Histories of African and Caribbean Women: (Re)writing to Repair the Holes and Knots of Memory (Fall 2021)
FRENCH 432/732: Seminar in French and Francophone Cultures:
Recent subtitles: Advances Toward Decolonization (Fall 2022), Stories of Postcoloniality (Fall 2021), Slavery: Injustice, Revolt, and Resistance (Spring 2021)
FRENCH 451: Cinema of the French-Speaking World: World Cinema in French: Wandering and Migration, or the Experience of Displacement (Spring 2022)
GLOBAL 391: Black Lives Matter: A Comparative Global Study (Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2024)
Global Studies Study Abroad: BLM: A Global Comparative Study (UWinteriM 2023, in the UK)
ITALIAN 145: Views of Italy: Multi-Racial Italy Today (each semester, beginning in Spring 2021)
The French program adopted free Open Educational Resource (OER) text books for the first two semesters of French language classes in Fall 2020, increasing access to language learning for students of all financial means. Third semester French will move to a free OER textbook in Spring 2023, and fourth semester in Fall 2023. Many of our other courses also rely heavily on Open Educational Resources or texts available online through the UWM Libraries, and we are working to have more of our classes use Low-Cost or No-Cost texts each semester.
Research
The faculty, staff, and students of the Department of Global Studies engage in research dedicated to deconstructing imperial approaches to the globe and expanding the diversity of scholars, research topics, and intellectual authority. A small selection of such recent publications and presentations by department members includes:
Presentations:
Anita Alkhas and Ruth Adeniyi, “Custom-Made: Remixing and Localizing Open Educational Resources (OER),” ACTFL: Language Connects, November 2022
Sarah Davies Cordova, in discussion with Marie-Clémence Andriamonta-Paes et Webster-Aly Ndiaye, “Madagascar–Routes & Histoires d’esclavisé.e.s de l’Océan Indien aux Amériques” [Madagascar—Routes and Histories of the Enslaved, from the Indian Ocean to the Americas], UWM and Alliance Française de Milwaukee, February 2021
Simonetta Milli Konewko, “Migrants’ Identity and Need for European Understanding,” European Studies Conference, University of Nebraska, October 2022
Kristin E. Pitt, “Escaping the Monsters that Terrorize the Beach: Cherie Jones’ How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House,” Calibans and Caribbeanisms: Troubling the Image, Marquette University, October 2023
Kristin Pitt, “Protesting Feminicide Through Self-Immolation: Mariana Enriquez’s ‘Things We Lost In the Fire,” American Comparative Literature Association 2021 Meeting, virtual, April 2021
Christine Wolf and Yomarie Castellano, “International Education: A Call to Action. Black Lives Matter: A Global Comparative Study & Companion Study Abroad,” NAFSA: Association for International Educators Region V Conference, October 2022
Publications:
Sarah Davies Cordova. “Decolonial spectatorship and Performances of Contemporary Dance in South Africa: Mamela Nyamza’s Choreographies of Embodies Politics of Race and Gender in Place.” e-Rea—Africa 2020: Artistic, Digital, and Political Creation in English-Speaking African Countries, vol 19.1, 2021.
Robin Pickering-Iazzi: Dead Silent: Life Stories of Girls and Women Killed by the Italian Mafias, 1878-2018. UWM Digital Commons, French, Italian and Comparative Literature Faculty Books, no. 2, 2019. https://dc.uwm.edu/freita_facbooks/2/.
Caroline Seymour-Jorn, Kristin M. Sziarto, and Anna M. Mansson McGinty: “The American Prophetic Tradition and Social Justice Activism among Muslims in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” Contemporary Islam, vol. 13, 2018.
Demetrius K. Williams, The Cross of Christ in African American Christian Religious Experience: Piety, Politics, and Protest . Rowman & Littlefield, 2023.
Events, Initiatives, and Relationships
Beyond specific classes and research projects, our work to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion also involves public events, community outreach, grant writing, and international relationships, including
- Collective Homage, “Rwanda 2021—Bruce Clarke’s Project Upright Men.” We organized the Milwaukee component at UWM Libraries of an international solidarity photo montage marking the 25th anniversary commemoration marking the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 2019-2020
- Each year we organize the Festival of Films in French, a celebration of films from around the French-speaking world, which has included a significant emphasis on African, Caribbean, and indigenous films, along with films by and about women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, in recent years. In 2022, the festival showcased films about women and by women, including two documentaries about indigenous artists and activists in Quebec (Je m’appelle Humain and Nin e tepueian – Mon cri) and Atlantique, Mati Diop’s 2019 winner of the Grand Prix and Cannes Film Festival about a young woman left behind in Dakar as her partner departs clandestinely to travel by boat to Europe.
- We worked with a diverse team across UWM to develop an IDEAS (Increase and Diversify Education Abroad for U.S. Students) grant to create the team-taught class that became GLOBAL 391: Black Lives Matter: A Comparative Global Study and the companion study abroad course, and have administered that class since UWM was awarded the grant. This course won a 2023 GoAbroad Innovation Award for Innovative Study Abroad Program.
- We hosted a screening of a live-stream of a staged reading of the postcolonial play A Tempest (Une Tempête) by Aimé Césaire, performed by Red Bull Theater and livestreamed from FIAF Florence Gould Hall in New York City, February 2022
- French faculty are periodic guests on the “Rive Gauche” show on Riverwest Radio WXRW. Recently, Sarah Davies Cordovas has done Radio Readings of Tous tes enfants dispersés by Beata Umubyeyi Mairessa (April 2021) and Milwaukee Blues by Louis-Philippe Dalembert (October 2021)
- Our French students and staff worked with Lynden Sculpture Garden in River Hills on their HOME project to welcome recent arrivals refugees to the Milwaukee area
- Honorary Professor Mme. Christiane Taubira, former French Minister of Justice, has an ongoing relationship with our department, beginning when she was awarded an honorary degree from UWM in January 2016.