Text from recent Global Core emailDear Students,
After two years of discussing
some of the concerns voiced by faculty, students and administrators that the
existing Major Cultures requirement did not fully meet the educational goals of
that portion of the Core Curriculum, I am delighted to report that, in the
spring of 2008, the Committee on Major Cultures, the Committee on the Core, and
the Committee on Instruction approved a revision to the requirement, and propose
to begin more focused discussions with students and faculty about the way to
move forward in further reshaping the requirement and considering its relation
to the Core writ large.
The Committee's first step was to change the
name of the requirement from Major Cultures to Global Core, and to eliminate the
B and C course lists in favor of one single list of approved Global Core
courses, which is essentially an expanded List A of the Major Cultures
requirement. The new Global Core requirement applies only to the class of 2012.
Continuing students may choose to satisfy either the Major Cultures or the
Global Core requirement.
The Committee also formulated a new
mission statement that more accurately describes the curricular goals of the
requirement, as you will see below in the revised statement from the College
Bulletin for 2008-2009.
For Students in the Class of
2012
The Global Core
requirement consists of courses that examine areas not the primary focus of
Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization and that, like other Core
courses, are broadly introductory, interdisciplinary, and temporally or
spatially expansive. Courses in the Global Core are organized around a set of
primary texts or artifacts, which may range from texts of literate traditions to
media (e.g. film), ritual performances or oral sources, produced in the regions
of the world in question. Global Core courses fall into two categories: those
that focus on a specific culture or civilization, tracing its appearance and/or
existence across a significant span of time and sometimes across more than one
present-day country or region; and those that address several world settings or
cultures comparatively (and may include Europe and the West), in terms of a
common theme, a set of analytic questions, or interactions between different
world regions.
Students must complete two courses fr
om the Global Core
List of Approved Courses for a letter grade.
The concerns that
motivated these changes are not new. From the inception of the Major Cultures
requirement, the need for small courses has been embedded in the discussions had
by faculty and students over the years. In some cases, that need has been met.
Students express satisfaction with many of the Major Cultures courses; as we
move forward, we expect that the best discussions in those classes will
continue. Primary texts remain the underpinning of the Global Core requirement,
but we have expanded the description of primary texts beyond written texts to
include, among others, art, oral sources, and ethnography. Ever since its
formation in 1919, the Core Curriculum has evolved to meet the knowledge demands
of a world that continues to grow more complex and more integrated. The move
towards a more comprehensive Global Core requirement continues that tradition of
change and responds to the contemporary moment of unprecedented cultural and
economic integration across the globe. The Global Core requirement offers
expanded opportunities to explore the complexities of the
21st-century through comparative study; for example, courses may explore the
interconnectedness of root cultures and their evolutions and influences in
different parts of the world, cross-cultural comparisons, and topical
comparisons, such as migration and immigration.
In the 08-09
academic year, there will be no immediate substantive changes in the courses
that meet the Global Core requirement (i.e. no new courses have been developed
specifically to meet the requirement). As a first step towards laying the
foundation for discussion about the kinds of courses that reflect the goals of
the Global Core requirement, we needed to increase the number of courses on the
Global Core list, which will slowly over time become smaller courses. List A
courses have all migrated to the list of approved Global Core courses for the
year, and at this point, about 40+ courses from Lists B and C have been
integrated into the new Global Core list. The remaining List B and List C
courses, which departments routinely offer for majors, concentrations, and
electives, will continue to be offered.
The existing courses in
Asian Humanities, African Civilizations, and Latin American Humanities provide
useful models of the direction in which the Committee on Major Cultures would
like see the Global Core requirement evolve. The pedagogical and resource
intensity of these multi-section courses require broad faculty support for their
success, as well as the creation of effective administrative support systems.
These are among the areas that the Committee will be working on over the next
year.
Over the course of the next year, the Committee on Major
Cultures will undertake extensive consultations with students and faculty in an
effort to lay the foundation for a more cogent set of Global Core offerings that
parallel the depth and rigor of Literature Humanities and Contemporary
Civilization, as well as their small-class format. We hope to create the
context in which faculty members will generate new courses specifically designed
with the curricular goals of the Global Core requirement in mind. That effort
is likely to stretch over the course of the next several years.
Advising deans, department chairs, and directors of undergraduate
studies are aware of the changes to the requirement.
The Global Core List of Approved Courses is
available on the College Web site.
Sincerely,
Patricia E. Grieve
Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Professor in the Humanities
Chair, Committee on
the Core and Committee on Major Cultures
