What does it take, and what responsibilities do students have, to act as "global citizens?" Professors Tom Arcaro and Rosemary Haskell tackle those questions in a new co-edited textbook and anthology, Understanding the Global Experience: Becoming a Responsible World Citizen, with chapters on topics ranging from the environment to religion to the international media.
Published by Pearson, the text features work by Elon University faculty, several of whom have previously taught the Global Experience freshman year seminar. The editors describe their project, which started in 2008, as a reincarnation of a paperback resource, self-published a decade ago by Arcaro and by associate professor of psychology Duane McClearn.
The new book “takes a fairly panoramic look at the global experience, everything from women’s issues to the drug trade internationally to politics, globalization and world literature,” said Arcaro, a professor of sociology and director of Project Pericles. “The basic question of what a global citizen is and should do is addressed.”
The book also comes at a time when an increasing number of colleges and universities are incorporating global studies into their own curricula.
“The hope is that our book will get a good share of those people interested in having a text for their course covering global issues,” Arcaro said. “We think – and we’re not alone – that this is the trend in higher education: having more globally aware students is now seen by many schools as a worthwhile, and even critical, goal.”
Arcaro and Haskell, who also contributed their own essays to the text, divided the book’s contents in half. The first six chapters examine the theory and methodology underlying work in the global studies classroom and explain different approaches to studying the world. The final seven chapters delve into particular topics, such as religion, gender, drugs, imperialism and the environment.
“We hope students will be fascinated by the variety of ideas explored in these chapters and by the variety of arguments presented,” said Haskell, a professor of English at Elon who, like Arcaro, joined the Elon faculty ranks in 1985. “We also hope they’ll start to learn that there are methods and processes they can adopt to help them make sense of a complicated world.”
The other Elon University professors who authored or co-wrote chapters in “Understanding the Global Experience” are the following:
• Robert G. “Bob” Anderson – Political Science
• Laurence A. Basirico – Sociology
• Anne Bolin – Anthropology
• Stephen Braye – English
• Ann J. Cahill – Philosophy
• Brian Digre – History
• Chinedu “Ocek” Eke – Communications
• Mathew Gendle – Psychology
• Duane McClearn – Psychology
• Jeffrey C. Pugh – Religious Studies
• Laura Roselle – Political Science
• Jean Schwind – English
• Kerstin Sorensen – Political Science
• Anthony Weston – Philosophy
