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 7 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: IRGGSpotlight. 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 2010-2011 academic year the IRGG continued to develop Yale's cosmopolitan mission by cosponsoring a one-day conference dedicated to James Walvin’s scholarship. Titled “Pioneering the History of Black Britain: A Conference in Honor of James Walvin, the conference convened a group of international and national scholars to address scholarly areas in which Professor Walvin has made significant contributions. We also cosponsored a campus-wide symposium titled What is Caribbean Studies: Prisms, Paradigms and Practices, which focused on questions such as, what constitutes the ‘Caribbean’ in Caribbean Studies? To what extent do the divergent locations, subjectivities, and traumas captured by the term Caribbean actually render a fixed notion of the Caribbean impossible? What is gained or missed by applying concepts such as empire, transnationalism, globalization, and neoliberalism to the locations historically imagined as the Caribbean?

In the 2011-2012 academic year, the IRGG will remain committed to sponsoring events that challenge 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. We will cosponsor the visitations of the following scholars: Stephen Palmié, Rinaldo Walcott, and Leigh Raiford.

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 IRGGSpotlight. 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.