Projects

The CGCC is a leader in developing new research and new approaches to understanding the globalization of markets, communities, and cultures - promising to shape the way we think about and study global communication. The CGCC is home to a number of projects that take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of global culture and communication.

Cultures of Democracy

Project Director: Dilip Gaonkar, Associate Professor, Communication Studies

The Cultures of Democracy project examines one of the most pressing issues for today’s foreign policy makers: democracy - how to foster it, where and why it thrives, and how we ought to think about it. Project Director and CGCC Director Dilip Gaonkar explains, "With the collapse of the Soviet Union , you see former Soviet states embracing the promise of democracy. This is also true in Latin America , in Asia , even in Africa and in places like Iran... To properly study and understand emerging democracies in other countries, it is important to put aside Western assumptions about the definition of a democracy."

Difficult Dialogues

Project Director: Dilip Gaonkar, Associate Professor, Communication Studies

Difficult Dialogues is scheduled to run from 2006-2008 and is an undergraduate teaching and consciousness-raising project funded by the Ford Foundation. The hallmark of the Difficult Dialogues initiative is a series of twelve seminars directed primarily at incoming freshman. The seminars will be offered by the School of Communication and taught by a select group of faculty members from a wide range of academic units. Northwestern University wants to prepare its students for leadership in the global civil society of the twenty-first century. This project works to fulfill this mission by preparing students to recognize difference in others and in themselves, to understand collective memory, and to communicate effectively about and across ethnic, religious, and other commitments. The seminars will focus on both multicultural issues and challenges in the US as well as conflicts and controversies that arise in other geographical sites over religious, ethno-racial, and cultural differences. Students will have an opportunity to become engaged participants in discussions of complex moral, religious, and cultural issues. In addition to the seminars, CGCC will organize six public forums to engage the wider university in cross-cultural awareness, learning and understanding.

Globalizing American Studies

Project Director: Brian Edwards, Associate Professor, English

The project was developed as a forum for thinking about the place of the U.S. and American culture in the world and to showcase comparative or transnational approaches to the study of the United States. Project goals include the creation of a network of scholars whose work is pushing the boundaries of fields such as literature, anthropology, gender studies, media studies, African American studies, and history; and to provide a dynamic space for thinking about Americanist work that responds to questions of globalization, global culture and Diaspora. Participants include United States-based scholars who are working in comparative and interdisciplinary modes and who are using archives and research outside the U.S. to analyze the international reach of American cultural production. Participants also include scholars from abroad who are analyzing the workings of U.S. politics and culture from a necessarily different perspective.

Global Visual Cultures

Project Director: Robert Hariman, Professor, Communication Studies

The project on Global Visual Cultures will explore key questions at the intersection of visual studies and globalization, with initial emphasis on three themes: (1) The visual citizen and visual advocacy: how are images of citizenship promoted, disseminated, and used within particular national contexts and in respect to articulating a global civil society? To what extent is citizenship in a global media environment dependent on visual representation, and how do those representations reflect specific interests, conventions, and ideologies? How are visual media used on behalf of global political action, whether by states, NGOs, social movements, or other actors? (2) Visual circulation and cultural identity: How do specific visual images acquire transnational circulation, and how does that affect communication and identity in varied contexts of reception? How are the “same” images and practices such as icons and video games used in different societies, and how are they used to articulate a transnational culture? How do different forms of visual literacy emerge and how do they sustain themselves or change amidst global media? (3) Visualizing global modernity: How is globalization itself dependent on visual images and conventions? How are local-global interactions and anxieties mediated by visual practices? Which visual arts, artists, and cultures offer alternative visions of global society? How do theories of the visual double as means for explicating forms of globalization?