Global Engagement Seminars

A Global Engagement Seminar (GES) is an intensive, credit-bearing summer seminar taught by a team of Smith faculty offered at an international site. The seminar is followed by a required internship or service-learning experience related to the seminar and is considered part of the work for the seminar.

Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)

GES Summer 2012 Courses

GES 300 Globalization and Sustainability in Costa Rica

Costa Rica is held as a model of sustainability and eco-friendly development, with legislation and regulation integral to its success. Yet, globalization is stressing the delicate balance between development on one side and human and environmental sustainability on the other. This course contests the idea that Costa Rica is a model of sustainability and examines how Costa Ricas history and politics and changing economic pressures affect resource use, conservation practices, and environmental protection, climate and biodiversity. Site visits include San Jose, Monteverde cloud forest, the Guanacaste coast, and coastal rain and mangrove forests.

GES 301 Jerusalem

Explores Jerusalem as a contested sacred and political space. Topics include the centrality of the city in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; archeology and the built landscape as a prism through which to understand the complicated layering of urban history and the competition between national communities; the importance of the city in contemporary Israeli and Palestinian national identities. Includes visits to sites of religious, historical, and political significance; meetings with local scholars, political figures, and community activists.

GES 302 From Labyrinth to Parthenon: Greek Myth and History in their Geological Context

This seminar will explore the relationship between the historical and cultural development of Ancient Greece and the underlying geology of the Greek islands (Crete, Santorini, Syros, Delos) and mainland, (Athens/Attica, Delphi). Visits to key sites and museums to examine the art and archaeology of prehistoric and classical Greece as well as field study of the prominent geological features of each region. Students will study first-hand the celebrated monuments and masterpieces of the Minoan, Mycenaean and Classical Greek civilizations, and explore the regions spectacular geological features, which had a dramatic, occasionally catastrophic, impact on the course of these civilizations.