The Global Graduate: Graduating in the Era of the Global University

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the figure of the ‘global graduate’ and the process of its implementation in, production of and use as an advertisement for international university programmes. The authors trace the hidden agendas of this figure and its potential rootedness in the growing neoliberal implications for higher education today. They therefore approach the ‘international’ in International Performance Studies from the angle of the global graduates it produces, attracts and excludes. By charting two personal accounts of circulating within this particular system of global education, they provide unsettling examples of how international performance pedagogy is implicated in the production of ‘global graduates’ in institutionally and non-institutionally aligned spheres. They discuss the ‘global graduate award’ of the University of Warwick and the ‘border-crossing’ practices in the ‘radical performance pedagogy’ of La Pocha Nostra. With an emphasis on proficiencies in cultural dexterity, collaboration and embracing mobility, both strategies of ‘re-warding’ (as in ‘awarding’) and of ‘curating’ (a ‘radical’ disciple) clearly employ the language of cultural capital that features in neoliberal virtues. By unveiling the language of cultural capital that is akin to features of performance research, such as internationalism, mobility and cultural exchange, the authors show how the performative strategies of ‘re-warding’ and ‘curating identities’ work with, within and against it.