Overview of Course

Our Global Studies course is the connective academic experience for the shipboard community. It is the place where we draw meaning from our time on the water, varied cultural encounters, explorations in port, and conversations about obligations and opportunities as global citizens. The course provides a narrative for the voyage, and skills and knowledge useful after our travels. Our aim is to better understand important global forces that structure our lives, shape the future, and demand our attention as we seek a better world. We will do this by drawing on multiple disciplines and ways of knowing to explore transnational patterns of human experience from the following perspectives:

The Blue World: Sailing across seas and into coastal ports provides us an unparalleled opportunity to discover the immense influence of the oceans on our planet and how ocean health affects all life into the future. Through this course we will also explore the impact of oceans on human societies across the globe, represented by our port countries.

Port Country Discovery: Our time in Port is where we will witness the global forces shaping our societies and environments in action and have the opportunity to make sense of these experiences through comparative thinking. This course will provide essential information about the geographies, cultures, histories, and current social issues of the places we visit to help facilitate our learning journeys.

Intercultural Competence: Engaging in positive interactions with people from a range of cultures is essential for a successful voyage and serves us well throughout our lives. Our port encounters, class sessions, and post-port reflections serve as an opportunity to hone personally valuable and professionally transferable skills of intercultural observation, communication, and interaction.

Global Challenges and Solutions: Global citizenship is commonly invoked as a justification for, and outcome of, global studies courses. But what is it, how is it experienced and practiced? And how might we become more engaged global citizens in creating a future that is better and more sustainable for all? These are the kinds of questions we will attempt to address through a focus on sustainable development, effective governance, diplomacy and international relations. In particular, we will link these concepts to key issues such as poverty reduction, quality educational access, health and well-being, gender equality, peace and justice, clean water and sanitation, reducing inequalities, and biodiversity conservation.

Additionally, we will consider perspectives designed to prepare us for each port country from a historical and current events and culture perspective which will be presented during Cultural Preports the day before arrival into each port.