This course offers an introduction to ways of thinking about, and visualizing, “the global” over time. People from different societies and cultures have been drawn together as a result of processes that can best be conceived of as “flows” of people, capital, ideas and goods. Using a panoramic lens, we will explore a series of interactions, analyzing the wide-ranging effects of those interactions and the artifacts they produced. By studying a variety of encounters, we will cultivate a broader sense of how the “global” has been defined and experienced through the lens of cultural interaction. Globalization itself is not a new phenomenon; it can be traced back centuries if not millennia.