UCF’s Global Perspectives Office hosts presentation by author, commentator Rachel Louise Snyder

Where did you get your jeans?

No, the answer is not The Gap.

And, according to author and radio commentator Rachel Louise Snyder, you can't always tell just by looking at the label inside your pants, which sometimes does not tell the whole story.

Snyder will be giving a presentation about globalization's impact in the developing world and how consumers can make responsible choices about their purchases.

The presentation, titled "Globalization: Manufacturing, Sweatshops, Development/Aid Work and Ethical Consumerism," will take place Thursday, Jan. 19, at 3 p.m. in the Cape Florida Ballroom in the Student Union.

The event, organized by the UCF Global Perspectives Office, is free and open to the public.

It is part of the 2011-2012 university-wide themes of People, Power, Politics and Global Change and Covering Crisis from the Frontlines.

Snyder's work is mainly focused on globalization. She is the author of Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade, which won the 2006 Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club. She is also an assistant professor at American University's Department of Literature and hosts a weekly radio segment about world cultures called Global Guru.

Snyder will bring experience of world travel to her UCF audience. She has traveled through Tibet, India and Nepal, where she interviewed the Dalai Lama. She lived in London and Cambodia before coming to Washington, D.C., where she resides now.

In 2000, she drove across Cuba to observe the island's social and economic revolution. This is when she began to appear as an essayist on NPR's All Things Considered.

After 9/11, Snyder covered the war in Afghanistan and the future of Afghan women by spending time camped out with prisoners held at the Kabul Jail for Women.

She has also done extensive work in Honduras and various countries in the Middle East. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Glamour, NPR's This American Life and National Geographic.

Other speakers to visit UCF to present on themes of People, Power, Politics and Global Change and Covering Crisis from the Frontlines include Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Shadid and Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.