The only thing everyone agrees on about globalization is that it’s happening. This course is devoted to wondering what that happening means, and how competing definitions of what globalization is participate in the event of its appearance in the contemporary world. What is at stake in “globalization”? Is it a process, and if so, what kind of process is it? Human? Inhuman? Is it an effect of capital? Of information? Or are those two, rather, effects of globalization? How are contested definitions and attitudes towards globalization, and its companion terms, “diaspora” and “cosmopolitanism,” shaped by disciplinary contexts? How is globalization constituted in relation to the future, and what are the terms of its threat, or its promise?

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