International Marketing: This course introduces you to the concepts and challenges of global marketing. We'll examine how firms adopt strategies and adapt practices to succeed in diverse economic, cultural, and political environments. Students will evaluate our semester-at-sea destinations as markets to enter and recommend marketing mixes for those destinations.
Prerequisites/Special Requirements:
Small journal (pocket size) to record observations in the field
Global Popular Culture: Socialization is learning to become a member of a particular society. Agents of socialization, like families, schools, churches, and governments, shape and inform young and old alike by providing boundaries for self-identity and public and private behavior. Sociologists traditionally have not seen pop culture as one of those agents of socialization; we will do so in this course. Students will learn to "read" and critically analyze images and
representations. We will carefully examine how children and young adults around the world use pop culture to create their self and social identities, using the lens of gender and sexuality, race, class, and age. We will investigate global advertising, print and visual media, music and dance, as well as other pop culture expressions, like total environment simulacra (i.e.; Disneyland), using a critical cultural studies perspective. The methodology we will use is experiential and ethnographic, with opportunities in every port to gather data. Using all the data collected, we will learn how to analyze it, using critical analytic skills and a sociological imagination. Students will
thus be prepared as part of a team to design, conduct, and present an original research project. Thus, you will not be a passive recipient of knowledge in this class, but rather an active cultural critic, participating in lively discussions, written and oral assignments, individual and group assignments, and in-depth research. At the end of this course, you will be able to think critically about global pop culture, having completed your own original team research.
Global Studies: The Global Studies (GS) course for SAS Spring 2011 will require all students on the voyage to take a critical look at globalization and its impacts on cities and regions around the world. Globalization is usually defined as an array of forces that are effectively shrinking our world, and in this course we shall be investigating the local consequences of these forces. The introductory section of the course begins with a look at transnational movements (flows) of trade, finance, information, people and culture. We shall be investigating the way such flows operate in and through a network of linked cities around the world, the top tier of which function as the 'command and control' centers at the so-called core of the global economy (the global 'North'). As we head for Brazil and then across to Africa and beyond, the emphasis of the course shifts to the 'periphery,' where we begin our exploration of the global 'South.' We shall be visiting some of the lower tier cities of the world's urban hierarchy -- in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The sources for Global Studies will include lectures and readings, supplemented with in-class discussions and debates, supplemented throughout with clips from documentaries and feature films. To this mix Global Studies this semester adds another dimension, involving fieldwork in the cities we visit along the way. This is the unique advantage of the Semester at Sea project, which allows us to step out of the classroom into the 'real' world, to flesh-out the 'local geographies of globalization' we have been learning about on board. One part of the fieldwork will come through SAS-sponsored FDP's and fieldtrips. Another component -- required for Global Studies this semester -- involves student fieldwork focusing on a specific research theme and conducted in groups (see later for a list of topics and a detailed description of the group projects).
Ethnography: Ethnography is integral to the discipline of anthropology. It is intrinsically tied to the development of anthropological theory and an excellent opportunity to practice various methods-above all qualitative, deep listening skills, that result in detailed description of humans, their behavior and the many facets that give their lives meaning. We will read a host of ethnographies that reflect the various Semester-at-Sea port visits. For each port we will read one ethnography. In so doing, we will explore various aspects of excellence in ethnographic research and writing. Students will try their own hand at ethnographic writing throughout the course by employing ethnographic methods, a number of directed field assignments, and interviewing techniques. The course will culminate with a group "ethnography" of our own experiences of our semester-at-sea. Issues of anthropological ethics, human subjects review, consent, establishing rapport, and respect for collaborators will be discussed in detail. We will also spend a good deal of time working on the skills associated with excellent interviewing techniques.
