WI-Global engages UW-Madison undergraduates in issues related to globalization and its impact on the world's communities, cultures, literatures, and languages, as well as on its systems of governance, exchange, education, and technologies. WI-Global has two different components: the WI-Global Forum and the WI-Global Paper Award. Additional details on each follow below.

Global Studies and the Offices of the Dean of Students announce the first WI-Global Awards for Spring Semester 2008.

Kristin Jokela (Sophomore, College of Letters & Science) is the recipient of the WI Global Forum Award for best posts on the topic—music—and the way it shapes our understanding of the wider world. Her posts reflect an engagement both with a wide range of music from around the world and the artistic, business, and governmental milieux in which contemporary musicians create and fans consume music. Jokela will receive a $125 gift certificate to the DoIT Techstore.

Rebecca Gilsdorf (Sophomore, College of Letters & Science) receives a WI Global Paper Award for her paper, "Humanitarian Intervention Policies: Cultural Relativists' Vs. Universalists' Doctrines." The paper was written for the course "Understanding Human Rights" (Anthropology 940) taught by Sharon Hutchinson (Anthropology) and Dr. Florence Chenoweth (Human Rights Initiative). This paper highlights the "increasing need for human rights protocols that actually solve problems and do not simply create temporary solutions." Gilsdorf discusses interventionist practices in a variety of contexts: female circumcision in Africa, the system of Tribunales in Guatemala, and Engineers Without Borders (USA). Emphasizing "the possibility of blending cultural relativism," to assure human rights, the paper makes a strong argument for reconsideration of intervention policies in a global context.

Mark Thompson (Senior, College of Letters & Science) receives a WI Global Paper Award for his paper, "Historical Forgetfulness: Writing Against the Past." The paper was written for the course, "Communities, Homelands, and Exiles" (English 563) taught by Theresa M. Kelley (English). This paper evaluates notions of history, the work of memory, and representation of past in three novels: W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz, Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land, and Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost. Thompson demonstrates ways in which these prominent novelists "embrace a past that writes against memory and embraces forgetting." The paper makes a strong argument for the "necessity of a communal, expansive account of past" in globally dispersed historical and cultural contexts.

Gilsdorf and Thompson will each receive $125 University Bookstore Gift Certificate. Instructors nominating the papers will receive reimbursements for research materials.

The WI-Global Forum – sponsored by Global Studies and the Offices of the Dean of Students – is an online discussion forum for UW-Madison undergraduates on contemporary global topics and their relevance to and impact on local communities. The purpose of the forum is to encourage and promote student awareness of issues of global concern, as well as to highlight and showcase our students’ participatory role in shaping and impacting the global agenda.

The discussion will take place on the WI-Global Forum site where additional details (rules for participation, information on prizes awarded, calendar, etc) can be found. Any UW-Madison undergraduate, regardless of major, may participate in the WI-Global Forum, but you must first register with Blogger (if you don't already have a Google account) and register with WI-Global. Complete details are available on the WI-Global Forum site.

If you cannot find the answers to your questions on the WI-Global Forum site feel free to email WI-Global directly.

More information on the WI-Global Forum for Fall 2008 will be available in August 2008.

Global Studies and the Offices of the Dean of Students sponsor the WI-Global Undergraduate Paper Award to encourage and recognize academic excellence in the area of global studies, as well as to recognize our faculty's efforts in training students as global citizens.

Two awards will be given each semester for papers written for a Global Studies course. Awardees will receive a $125 University Bookstore Gift Certificate. All nominees will receive a certificate of recognition. Instructors who nominate the winning papers will each receive reimbursements for research materials.

Only papers written by undergraduates for courses included in Global Studies Course Listing are eligible to be nominated for the award. (Faculty members: to have a course considered for inclusion on the Global Studies course list, please complete the course submission form.) Paper topics can be from any academic discipline in any UW school or college. Only continuing students are eligible to have their work considered for the award (i.e. graduating seniors cannot have their work nominated).

The Spring 2008 award was announced on 6 June 2008. More information and deadlines for the Fall 2008 award will be available in September 2008.

Course instructors can nominate one paper per course and email it to WI-Global along with a copy of the course syllabus (see below). Nominations should be made on the basis of the paper's successful fulfillment of the requirements for the course and expectations from the specific assignment.

Nominated papers will be evaluated on the following criteria:

1. The paper reflects a rigorous and sincere engagement with a particular theme, concept, phenomenon, or aspect of contemporary global studies.
2. The paper makes an effective and convincing argument for the consideration of its topic as a matter of global concern.
3. The paper combines original thinking with a judicious acknowledgement of the scholarship in the field and/or engagement with the reading materials for the course.

If you have questions regarding the award, nominating procedure, etc, please email us.

Please a paper for consideration.
Be sure to attach a copy of both the paper and course syllabus.