Teaching Sociology in an Overseas Program: The Uses of Marginality

This paper argues that offeringpart of the sociology curriculum overseas enables an instructor to take advantage of the students' marginal position abroad. The students'marginality helps us achieve three goals discussed in Teaching Sociology: engagingthe interest of undergraduate students (Mayer 1986); dealing with their ethnocentricity and lack of world orientation (Falk and Moloy 1985,Sanderson 1985); and integrating experiential elements into a course (Grant et al 1981). Not al our students will be able to go abroad, of course, and the paper also suggests that some of the techniques developed overseas are valuable with students whose marginality is less obvious.