Peter Berger asserts that the inherited  worldview of any society or culture is a created one. Using the narrative, Beauty and the Beast, as a symbolic template, this course will use anthropology, sociology, and literature to explore and examine the political economy of capitalism, its principles, and the mechanisms and consequences of globalization. By including indigenous research methods we will engage in the process  of "unplugging" the culturally embedded hegemonic narratives of race and racism, class and caste, gender and sexism, sexuality and heterosexism, religion and worldview, and whiteness and white privilege in order to become more awake in the world we have created.  

This Coordinated Studies Program takes as its point of departure that academia is deeply entrenched within various processes of colonization. These processes of colonization have been articulated in pedagogical as well as curricular practices that are often meant to normalize the individual and foster a particular outlook. This has occurred through a 'knowledge is power' system of  scholarship and curriculum that in tandem, embeds and is embedded in Eurocentric, falsely universalizing methodologies that are grounded in colonial interests. What is and what counts as scholarship has developed within a cultural, political and economic framework that has been dominated by the "First World ."  

Therefore, we will use Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies and some of Beauty and the Beast films as points of departure to inform our attempt as a learning community to forge new visions of knowledge production: As  a critique that looks simultaneously back and forward as well as speaks from both within and without, we will fully embrace the new 'experimental moment' by taking risks and opening doors to a newer form of education.