The Third World Studies Program has three main objectives: To provide an understanding of the Third World and its relationships to the West. In order to understand these relationships, it is necessary to study the historical context out of which the present relationships developed. For example, besides trying to understand what kind of society existed in Meso-America when the Spaniards arrived in 1520, the student must also have an understanding of the historical development in Europe that resulted in Spain's decision to seek wider trade abroad. There is insistence on both the similarities and differences that Third World societies have among themselves and the similarities and differences with Western societies. To provide an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the Third World. The program is not conceived as being exclusively historically-oriented nor as being predominantly a social science program, but rather one that integrates both the social sciences and the humanities.<br> To provide an understanding of the shifting economic and political nature of the countries designated as belonging to the ''Third World,'' especially in light of the dramatic political and economic changes worldwide in the late 1980s and 1990s. To this end, our Third World studies courses will, where appropriate, address and contextualize the history of the term ''Third World'' and its current applications in scholarship and the broader international media.