The Research Seminar in Latin American Studies is pleased to present:
Thomas Kemple (Sociology, UBC), “Class, Text, and World: Rethinking Global Citizenship in Guatemala”
September 21, 2016, 2-4pm
Boardroom, 3rd Floor, Liu Institute for Global Issues
This presentation takes Emile Durkheim’s relatively neglected lectures on ‘professional ethics and civic morals’–presented to his classes at the University of Bordeaux (1890–1900) and the Sorbonne (1904–14) and first published under the title Leçons de sociologie (‘lectures or lessons in sociology’)–as a kind of script for rethinking the past, present, and future of the performance of university teaching and learning off campus.
To illustrate these ideas, I examine my ethnographic fieldnotes, photographs, and interviews from an undergraduate group study program in Guatemala that combines courses in Philosophy and Sociology by using the classroom-in-the-field as a site for investigating the theory and practice of professional ethics, civic morals, and ‘education for global citizenship.’
Positioning Durkheim’s self-presentation before students against the background of other intellectual breakthroughs made at the academic podium by predecessors (Comte) and contemporaries (Tarde), I consider how experiential learning takes place in various ways both in and outside the classroom among students, teachers, and community partners.