Fries Center for Global Studies

Decentering Europe

As a complement to our listing of units with a regional or area-studies approach, we list here academic units that have taken steps to decenter the European experience in their curriculum and pedagogy. Decentering is not the same as devaluing. It encourages us to make room for and consider with intention all voices including those (historically) less dominant in global discourse. To give just one example, the Philosophy Department can both consider Plato to be a great philosopher and change the name of a course from “Ancient Philosophy” to “Ancient Western Philosophy."

Units not listed here are provisionally omitted as not currently highlighting features relevant to decentering Europe. The information here has been gathered primarily from each unit’s website and is a perpetual work-in-progress; please contact fcgs@wesleyan.edu with any questions or updates. 

• African American Studies
  • Program of study centered on the Black Atlantic world, especially in the United States and the Caribbean. 

  • AFAM 101 (Introduction to Africana Studies) locates African American Studies in the broader context of the African Diaspora 
• African Studies
  • This minor aims at developing an understanding of African history, contemporary issues facing the continent, and the creative and intellectual contribution of Africans. 
• American Studies
  • Department pursues the study of the United States in a hemispheric and global context. 

  • The major stresses a comparative approach to the study of the United States. Prominent features of U.S. cultural development are juxtaposed to similar processes and phenomena in a variety of nations in the Americas. By studying cultural phenomena across national boundaries, American Studies majors develop a rich understanding of the complex histories that have resulted from the conflict and confluence of European, indigenous, African, and Asian cultures throughout the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific. 
• Anthropology
  • Anthropology studies the complexity and diversity of human and nonhuman life in an interconnected world; Anthropology is an education in the world’s diverse cultures and in the global flows and exchanges that shape all of our lives. 

  • One learning goal: “We want students to think critically about discourses that divide the world into fully modern western Selves and not-yet-modern non-western Others, but to do so without romanticizing cultural differences.” 
• Archaeology
  • Archaeology Program faculty specialize in different regions of the world, with research projects in East Asia, India, the Middle East and Mediterranean, and North America, and emeritus faculty have ongoing projects in Europe. 
• Art History
  • “In order to become conversant in art history as a global practice, students must demonstrate proficiency in at least one foreign language.” 

  • One of the major’s learning goals is “Intercultural literacy, including proficiency in at least one foreign language and knowledge of artistic production in several world regions.” 

  • Courses include many that are concerned with African, East Asian, and South Asian art. 
• Art Studio
  • Major requires 3 Art History courses in different geographic areas; a global survey course or a multi-continental course may substitute for one of the geographic area courses. 

  • One learning goal is “Critique methodologies, and the ability to analyze art from diverse intellectual traditions and technical approaches 
• Biology
  • Major emphasizes the global significance of its subject matter (“biodiversity conservation, global climate change, epidemiology, and human health and well-being").  

  • Learning goals include “We also encourage our students to engage in ethical thinking about biological research and the role of biology in society and sustainability.” 
• Caribbean Studies
  • “The Caribbean has extraordinary diversity in its people, languages, and cultural histories. It is a microcosm of contemporary global problematics: immigrant, indigenous, settler, and diasporic communities negotiating their status as nations and polities, while preserving individual pasts and identities.” 
• Chemistry
  • During 2023-24, hosted Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence Dr. Pawan Sharma; see more in this article on “Internationalizing Chemistry.” 
• Civic Engagement
  • One of six course categories is “Civic Engagement in Cross-Cultural Perspective” 
• College of East Asian Studies
  • “The College of East Asian Studies (CEAS) has two, mutually-reinforcing core missions: to cultivate an outstanding group of students with strong language abilities, wide-ranging knowledge about East Asia, and an area of particular expertise; and to promote knowledge of and engagement with the histories, cultures, and contemporary significances of East Asia across the campus, curriculum, and broader community.” 

  • Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies includes a gallery, Japanese garden, and tatami tearoom. 

  • “Japan, China, and Korea are related yet distinctive civilizations. Each has its own traditions and patterns of development. These traditions have played an important role in the development of culture around the globe and remain formative influences today.” 
• College of Integrative Sciences
  • “The CIS academic structure complements existing departments and has the flexibility to evolve with the needs of an ever-changing world.” 
• College of Letters
  • Students “learn to think critically about texts in relation to their contexts and influences—both European and non-European" 

  • In Fall 2022 welcomed a new tenure-track colleague focused on the medieval Islamic world, a position explicitly designed to broaden the scope of the COL. 
• College of Science and Technology Studies
  • The College of Science and Technology Studies offers an interdisciplinary course of study that investigates science, technology, and medicine across social, historical, and geographical contexts.  We have prioritized research and teaching in science and technology studies that poses its questions, derives its methods and concepts for investigation from the epistemological standpoints and lived experiences of groups positioned outside and situated within normative Euro-American contexts.  
  • Year-to-year, STS faculty research and teaching interests cover diverse national, international, and global contexts for the development and conduct of science, medical practice, and technological innovation. Scholarship in science studies often draws upon feminist, antiracist, and decolonial theories and research methods, approaches to decenter Eurocentric, masculinist, and settler scientific practices, technologies, and epistemologies.
• Dance
  • “The Dance Department at Wesleyan is a contemporary program with a global perspective. The program embraces classical forms from Bharata Natyam, Ghanaian, Ballet, Javanese, and vernacular forms from jazz, hip hop, Eastern European social dances, to experimental practices that fuse tradition and experimentation into new, contemporary forms.” 

  • “In addition to the vibrant global dance experience offered on campus every semester, we encourage students to experience dance around the world [through study abroad].” 

  • Learning goals emphasize intercultural perspective and set European-derived traditions and cultures alongside others; for example: students “will develop these skills in at least two of the following techniques: modern/contemporary, Bharata Natyam, West African, ballet, black vernacular forms/hip hop, and South East Asian dance forms...” 
• Earth & Environmental Sciences
  • The major “covers many aspects of the natural world, on Earth and on other planets.” 

  • “E&ES students work with faculty on research projects that range from climate studies to active volcanoes in the Andes, from the structure of the Grand Canyon to the structure of the planet Venus, from nearby coastal areas (Long Island Sound) to faraway lagoons (Vieques Island, Puerto Rico).” 
• Education Studies
  • “Through a range of courses across the curriculum, students look critically and analytically at educational institutions, practices, and thinking, from early childhood through adulthood, using local, national, and global lenses.” 

  • One learning goal: “Understanding of the relationship between culture and education, and between different cultures and their education systems (e.g., multiculturalism and multilingualism; globalization; goals of education within a culture or country; comparative studies of education systems, immigrants’ experiences in unfamiliar systems).” 
• English
  • The major's core requirements are based on the idea that "to imagine futures out of the past and present requires studied spatial and temporal awareness, theoretical knowledge, and creative practice."
  • In particular, the "Literary Georgraphies" requirement mandates at least one course fit the "World" category: "courses focus on literatures outside of the United States and Great Britain. Current English department offerings focus on literatures from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the premodern world."
• Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
  • “Our courses offer students historical and contemporary explorations of women, gender, and sexuality from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives on Africa, the Caribbean, East Asia, Europe, Latin America, and South Asia, as well as the U.S.” 

  • Learning goals include:  

  • “have a well-developed understanding of the interdisciplinary, transnational and intersectional concerns of the field; and 

  • interrogate the historical and contemporary, local and transnational forces underlying social and economic injustice and inequality in order to promote greater possibilities for freedom and social justice.” 
• Film Studies
  • Two courses which explicitly attend to decentering Europe are:
  • Film 290: Global Film Melodrama - Often patronizingly dismissed as ‘women's weepies’, this course will examine the proliferation and transformation of melodrama film within various national, subnational, postcolonial, queer, and global contexts. Importantly, this course asks, what are the stakes and implications of ‘Global’ in “Global Film Melodrama”? We will move away from an additive model that often presents global film histories as parallel and separate developments, an addendum to the “mainstream” (European and North American) cinemas that at best responds to or is influenced by these, while implicitly maintaining the separation between the assumed “norm” and its “others”. Moving away from this Western centrism both as a structural and pedagogical framework and understanding melodrama as predominantly a product of Western modernity, we will instead look at the emergence of melodrama, its aesthetics, and idioms within transnational contexts.
  • Film 329: Bollywood and Beyond: Introduction to Indian Cinema - This course provided a historical and thematic introduction to Indian cinema, with a particular focus on Bombay cinema or Hindi-Urdu language popular Indian cinema, 1930s - present. Students study the unique storytelling conventions of popular Indian cinema that are informed by melodramatic non-linear plot structure, multiple digressions, flashbacks and subplots, song and dance sequences, elaborate costumes and star systems. Doing so, the course pushes the students to ask: Why (and if) we must take the “popular” seriously, and what vocabularies are suitable to discuss the popular in non-Western realms? Rather than defining it by its ‘otherness’ or ‘difference’ from western cinema how do we engage with it on its own terms and context? How does studying popular Indian cinema challenge, expand and decenter our knowledge of the familiar and mainstream western structures and experience of cinema?
• French Studies
  • “French is spoken by more than 220 million people worldwide and is the only language other than English spoken on five continents, from Senegal to New Caledonia, from Quebec to Louisiana, from Belgium to Guadeloupe. Moreover, French is also one of the official languages of the United Nations, UNESCO, NATO, the International Red Cross, Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), les Jeux Olympiques, la Féderation Internationale de Football Association, and many other international organizations.” 

  • “Students who study French will develop critical self-awareness by becoming more adept at understanding other points of view....” 

  • Major aims to develop “a broad knowledge of Francophone cultures....” 

  • In addition to the Wesleyan-Vassar Program in Paris, “Wesleyan-approved study-abroad programs also currently exist in Cameroon, Madagascar, Morocco, and Senegal.” 
• German Studies
  • One learning goal: “Intercultural literacy: Students can expect to gain insight into unfamiliar cultural attitudes and artifacts, which enables them to be open-minded and competent participants in their own and foreign environments.” 
• Global Engagement
  • The minor allows “students to select courses that provide a global perspective according to their interests...”; students must “take four global perspective courses of their choosing in at least three world regions.” 

  • Learning goals include “Global Self-Awareness” and “Understanding Global Systems”  
• Global South Asian Studies
  • “Explores the cultures connected to South Asia (including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives, and the Tibetan cultural world) in a worldwide context.” 

  • “Since the era of European imperialism, South Asian peoples have made homes and cultures in the Americas—the Caribbean, Canada, the United States, as well as in the Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda.  These diaspora populations have contributed in myriad ways to their new homes and have also continued to play an important role in shaping national politics, cultures, and economies within South Asia.” 
• Government
  • Two of four concentrations are “Comparative Politics” and “International Politics” 

  • Within “Political Theory,” faculty have interests in “the intersections of South Asian, Afro-modern, and American political thought” and in “the ways anger was heard and thwarted at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” 
• Hispanic Literatures & Cultures
  • Focuses on “knowledge of the literatures and cultures of Latin America, Spain, and other Hispanophone communities in the US and around the world. The major emphasizes the history and cultural diversity of a world whose geographic reach is vast and whose heritages extend from the pre-colonial period in Latin America and European classical antiquity to the present.” 

  • Major requirements ensure that majors “explore the historical and geographic diversity of the Hispanophone world.” 

  • One learning goal is “the capacity to understand diverse points of view.” 
• History
  • The department’s “Regions and Pathways” are diverse, including both various world regions (including Europe among others) and various thematic clusters that cross regions. 
• Human Rights Advocacy
  • Wesleyan partner University Network for Human Rights works on projects around the world (as seen here), very much including human rights concerns in the U.S. 
• Jewish & Israel Studies
  • Annual film series showcases a diverse range of Israeli films 
• Latin American Studies
  • Major is focused on the “interdisciplinary understanding of the historical, cultural, political, and socioeconomic contours of this diverse region” of Latin America and the Caribbean. 
• Middle Eastern Studies
  • Minor focuses broadly on the Middle East and requires language courses in “Hebrew, Modern Standard Arabic or any other relevant languages from the region.” 
• Music
  • The department is “committed to the study, performance, and composition of music from a perspective that recognizes and engages the breadth and diversity of the world's musics and technologies”; it has attracted “students from around the globe since the inception of its visionary program in World Music four decades ago.” 

  • Resources include “the World Instrument Collection (which includes the David Tudor Collection of electronic musical instruments and instrumentation) and the Scores and Recordings Collection of Olin Library (which includes the World Music Archives).” 

  • “The Music Department is based on the belief that all of the world's musics warrant close study and that all musicians should cultivate the ability to engage with unfamiliar musical traditions. The department provides performance opportunities for the entire Wesleyan community through orchestra, Chinese orchestra, concert choir, the Collegium Musicum, organ, South Indian voice and percussion instruction, wind ensemble, jazz orchestra, Korean drumming and creative music ensemble, laptop ensemble, Javanese gamelan, West African drumming, South Indian music, steel band, and taiko.” 

  • “Diversity of musical experience is a core value of the Music Department and is expected of all music majors.  Towards that goal, each major’s program of study must include at least two Music credits out of the major’s main area of interest.” 

  • One learning goal: “Engage unfamiliar traditions and paradigms of humanly organized sound with sensitivity and insight.” 
• Muslim Studies
  • “Muslims live on every continent on the planet. Contradicting pervasive stereotypes, only about 30% of Muslims live in the Middle East and North African region. Moreover, through immigration and conversion, increasingly evident and important Muslim minorities have emerged in European and American contexts who are both expressive of existing cultural forms and productive of new amalgamations and inventions. Many of these minorities also face marginalization and persecution as nations debate the meaning of national exclusivity, pluralism, secularism, and tolerance.” 

  • Minor requires “At least one course in three of the regional categories.” Regions are: 

  • Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 

  • South, East, and Southeast Asia (SESA) 

  • Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) 

  • North America and Europe (NAE) 
• Philosophy
  • “Philosophers at Wesleyan approach our subjects with tools from a range of traditions of inquiry.” 

  • One learning goal: “Students become familiar with multiple philosophical approaches, thinkers, traditions, and themes, including the non-canonical and decolonial. Learning to appreciate historical, cultural, or other forms of difference both catalyzes new thinking and challenges those narrow outlooks that would undermine genuine philosophical engagement. Good philosophical education does not require any particular canonical content....” 
• Physics
  • “The Physics Department encourages study abroad as an opportunity to provide our majors an appreciation of their potential as citizens of the world scientific community.” 
• Psychology
  • Third learning objective (Ethical and Social Responsibility) is:
  • Recognize the necessity for ethical behavior in all aspects of the science and practice of psychology.
  • Critically evaluate relations of psychological and behavioral knowledge with social policy, public health, and clinical practice.
  • Use psychological knowledge to clarify social disparities, and to promote human well-being and change in a multicultural and global context.
  • Endeavor to make psychology more inclusive, including practices that help dismantle systemic and structural forms of racism in psychological science, training, and applied settings.
• Religion
  • “Our faculty's teaching and research spans American and African American religions in the U.S. and the Caribbean; Buddhism in India and Tibet; Christianity at its origins; Judaism in the diaspora; Hindu and Muslim traditions in India, and Islamophobia in the U.S.; the intersections of continental philosophy and Christian theology; Islamic renewal movements among South Asian workers in the Middle East, and Buddhist and shaman revival movements in the former Soviet Union. Our faculty pursues field research globally, including such sites as Alabama, Haiti, Nepal, Abu Dhabi, India, and Siberia. Many of our majors undertake research and field studies abroad as well--in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas.” 
• Romance Studies
  • “All majors are strongly encouraged to spend at least one semester studying abroad in a Romance-language-speaking country. In addition to Wesleyan’s own programs in Bologna, Madrid, and Paris, there are currently Wesleyan-approved study-abroad programs in Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Italy (Florence, Rome), Madagascar, Mexico, and Senegal.” 
• Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies
  • “The study of Russia, Eurasia, and East-Central Europe is fundamental in today’s world. Solutions to many geopolitical and environmental crises require nuanced understanding of the countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire.” 
• Theater
  • Theater courses tend to be intersectional, so while there isn't an explict focus on European decentering, classes are designed to challenge the theatrical canon through critical perspectives. Additionally, courses cross-listed with FGSS and AFAM, particularly Performance Studies, are grounded in decolonizing principles. Some examples:
  • THEA 364: Friendship & Collaboration: In Theory, In Practice (AFAM)
  • THEA 316 Advanced Topics in Performance Studies: Imagining Anticolonial Performance
  • THEA 267Revolution Girl Style Now!: Queer and Feminist Performance Strategies (cross-listed with FGSS & AMST)
  • THEA 150 Intro to Performance Studies
  • THEA/ENGL/AFAM 176 August Wilson (FYS)
  • THEA/CEAS 243 Chinese Theater and Drama