Initiative on Race, Gender, and Globalization

The Initiative on Race Gender and Globalization (IRGG) at Yale University was established at the beginning of the academic year 2004-2005 with the support of the Office of the Provost. The primary goals of the IRGG are to internationalize the undergraduate and graduate curricula through scholarly events and courses that foster intellectual exchange across geographic borders and political perspectives. Both in his speech “The Internationalization of the University” and in his Baccalaureate Address “Life on a Small Planet,” President Levin addresses the necessity of working across political and geographic boundaries in our contemporary world. He notes in his Baccalaureate Address that “this nation has suffered through much of its history from isolation and insularity.” “Too often,” he notes, “our leaders have been insufficiently mindful of how America is perceived throughout the world.”

For the past 8 years the IRGG has committed itself to organizing and sponsoring courses, colloquia, conferences, symposiums, and speakers in alignment with President Levin's cosmopolitan mission. Our sponsored events and courses have not only addressed issues of national "isolation and insularity," but have also challenged the Yale community to think critically and cross culturally about the constitution of globalization in politics, the arts, economics, and history. As a way to cultivate President Levin’s internationalist mission at Yale, the IRGG has established relationships with departments, programs, and research centers on the Yale campus such as African American Studies, American Studies, the British Art Center, the Center for Transnational Cultural Analysis, English, Environmental Studies, Latin American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and History. These cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural relationships have fostered a spirit of interdisciplinarity better able to nurture a global awareness necessary for understanding existing and emergent political issues, transitions in economic markets, and identity formations in our globalized world. For more information about our events and past speakers, click on the following link to read the latest edition of our yearly newsletter, the IRGG Spotlight: IRGG Spotlight. You can also click on the following link to read past editions of our newsletter: IRGG Spotlight Newsletters. Note, you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open our newsletters.

During the 2011-2012 Acdemic Year the IRGG remained committed to developing Yale's cosmopolitan mission. We sponsored and cosponsored events that challenged us to think about the intersection of sexuality, race, and gender; diasporicity and post-coloniality; the geographic politics of liberalism and neoliberalism; among other important topics. Events for the Academic Year were also organized to provide support for Professor Carby's graduate seminars Theorizing Racial Formations and Caribbean Diasporic Intellectuals. Our speakers included Professors Stephen Palmié, Rinaldo Walcott, and Leigh Raiford. For more on 2011-2012 events see the latest issue of our newsletter, IRGG Spotlight.

We are currently in the process of organizing our 2012-2013 Academic Year events. In collaboration with the Council on Iberian and Latin American Studies, in Fall 2012 or Spring 2013 the IRGG will cosponsor an international and campus wide event to discuss Ecuador's new Constition and to debate the politics of Plurinational governmentality.The goals of this event are to stage a conversation guided by the following questions: What events led to the shaping of the new Constitution? How will changes in the Constitution affect marginalized peoples, particularly indigenous Ecuadorians and Afro-Ecuadorians? How will the new Constitution transform the daily realities of Ecuadorian citizens? How are indigenous Ecuadorians and Afro-Ecuadorians responding to these legal inroads? On a different note, what events led to granting inalienable rights to ‘nature’ — that nature, in other words, “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution?” What have been the political consequences of transforming the status of ecologies from being property to being recognized as rights bearing bodies?

Once again, for further details about our 2010-2011/2011-2012 events please click on the following link to download the latest edition of our flagship newsletter, the IRGG Spotlight. For details on past events and speakers click on the following link: IRGG Spotlight Newsletter. Note, you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open our newsletters.