Global Cities: Diaspora and Cosmopolis

FAIN: AE-248004-16

CUNY Research Foundation, LaGuardia Community College (Long Island City, NY 11101-3007)
Christopher Schmidt (Project Director: August 2015 to September 2019)
Allia Abdullah-Matta (Co Project Director: March 2016 to September 2019)

A two-year interdisciplinary faculty and curricular development project focused on global cities.

“Global Cities: Diasporas and Cosmopolis” is a two-year institute that we are proposing as an NEH Humanities Initiative at Community Colleges in order to bring LaGuardia Community College faculty into dialogue with scholars who examine global cities. Each year of the two-year institute will focus on a distinct topic within the scholarship: “Diasporas” in the first year and “Cosmopolis” in the second year. This sequence mirrors the movement and experience of our students as they enter and make their way through LaGuardia. Many of our students—international students especially—arrive at LaGuardia from different global cultures, representing diaspora itself. Through the course of their studies, these students move toward the more universal and global concerns of cosmopolitanism, an ethical obligation to those who are geographically or culturally remote from oneself. This movement from the personal to the universal—while still maintaining respect for cultural differences—is the ultimate go