Guidelines for Selecting Electives
The principles and themes below are meant as guidelines as you choose electives for the DGS Certificate. Electives should speak to the key principles in some way, and they should address one or more of the key themes. If you think a course fits the Certificate’s aims even though it does not explicitly link to these, feel free to run it by a member of the DGS Coordinating Committee.
Key Principles
For the UMass Decolonial Global Studies Certificate, ideal electives take non-Eurocentric, anti-colonial, and intersectional approaches to histories of domination and inequality as these interact with practices of resistance, alliance, and creaturely and/or planetary care. The Certificate emphasizes history in order to cultivate and support non- Eurocentric genealogies, epistemologies, and methods. We therefore encourage you to choose courses that develop a historical orientation toward the present, over those focused mainly on contemporary periods or the recent past (e.g. the last 50-75 years). We also encourage you to take courses that widen your typical geographical lens, in order to develop your understanding of cross-regional differences and interactions.
Typical Themes and Methods in DGS Elective Courses
- Empire, colonialism, anticolonialism (decolonial and postcolonial)
- Historicizing of intersectional identities (race, class, ethnicity, nation, gender, sexuality, ability)
- Decolonizing of epistemology, imagination, institutions, science, and/or ethics: e.g., alternative worldmaking projects
- Interdisciplinary approaches from at least two of the following areas: Humanities and Fine Arts; Social Sciences; and Sciences. Courses from other colleges or schools may also be considered.
- Longue durée, non-eurocentric, and/or Indigenous history or theory, covering periods and regions outside Europe and before the rise of white European hegemony
- Inequality: labor, slavery, caste, class; intersectional formations; labors of care