Postgraduate - UnitAPG5019 - Approaches to transnationalism

This unit is designed to introduce students to a concept that has assumed increasing influence in the humanities and social sciences: transnationalism. Complex social and cultural interactions that appear to obey no laws of geography and statehood imply that national paradigms are no longer adequate for research and analysis: a transnational approach has emerged in their wake. A vast array of contemporary and historical phenomena, ranging from migration to gender, politics, race, ethnicity, literature, religion, citizenship, and identity have been viewed through the lens of a transnational perspective.
But the term is by no means self-explanatory, and this unit examines the intellectual origins and impetus for transnationalism and its relationship with globalization, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, postcolonialism, and world history. This unit is taught intensively in Prato, with students from the University of Copenhagen, and will study leading figures in the field of transnationalism. The unit is inter-disciplinary, so as to gain a sense of the variations in the application of transnational perspectives across the humanities, and the intellectual context that brought the new terminology into the academic spotlight.