Essential tools for teaching international and global studies

In 2011 UNC Press published Introduction to International and Global Studies, by Shawn Smallman and Kimberley Brown. Drawing on their fifteen years of teaching international studies to undergraduates, Smallman and Brown wrote this introductory textbook for undergraduates in a rapidly growing field and increasingly popular undergraduate major. The book encompasses the latest scholarship in what has become a markedly interdisciplinary endeavor.

Book features

Following an introduction that lays out key concepts, themes, and issues comprising the field, Smallman and Brown offer a chapter-by-chapter treatment of core topics, including the history of globalization; economic, political, and cultural globalization; security, energy, and development; health; agriculture and food; and the environment. These topics allow for the examination of such diverse, timely, and pressing issues as commodity chains, labor (including present-day slavery), human rights, and multinational corporations.

Online features

In addition to the paperback text, there are lots of online tools available for students and instructors. At introtoglobalstudies.com, you’ll find an instructor’s manual with sample syllabus and an additional book chapter for class discussion. The authors are also actively blogging about current events with a global perspective, providing starting points for classroom discussion about such topics as Canada’s oil sands and the Northern Gateway Pipeline, the drug war in Mexico, and current challenges in treating tuberculosis in South Africa. They also point readers to other online resources for teaching international and global studies.

They welcome comments and dialogue about what’s at stake now and in the future as we shape an increasingly interconnected world in which people from different hemispheres, different cultures, different climates can and must work together not as strangers but as neighbors.