Transnationalism in Study Abroad: Linking Theories and Practice

Transnational, multi-sited, academic excursions are a characteristic and compelling feature of many SIT semester and summer study abroad programs. This presentation seeks to couple the expanding interest in and scholarship on transnationality with the practices of study abroad. Characterizing its breadth and scope, transnationalism has been applied to research on such disparate themes as international migration, subjectification and place making, capitalist reorganizations of the local and global, travel, refugees, and politics extending beyond the purview of the nation-sate. Transnationalism, as such, “has provided a broad, flexible conceptual apparatus that has been adopted across disciplines to examine interconnections between global economic restructuring, the politics and cultures of diasporas, ethnicity and race, class, community, gender, and the nation” (Olsen and Silvey 2006:805). Despite this breadth, transnationalism and study abroad remain, for the most part, distinct areas of focus. What, if anything, might transnational theories offer both the conceptualization and implementation of multinational/multi-sited study abroad? How might we integrate potential theoretical insights from transnational scholarship with actually existing practices of transnational study abroad? How, in turn, might our programs contribute to ongoing and expanding interrogations of transnationalism? This presentation/discussion explores these and other questions with the goal of both enhancing the educational excursions SIT currently offers, while considering the ways in which we are actively practicing transnationalism