The Culture requirements continue and expand on the FYS courses by situating the study of culture and the arts in specific disciplinary, historical, and geographical contexts.
Every student is required to successfully complete a minimum of three courses in academic departments that provide significant experiences in U.S. Diversity, Regional Focus, and Global Connections. No course can be designated as more than one of U.S. Diversity, Regional Focus, and Global Connections.
U.S. Diversity (CPUD)
The purpose of the CPUD requirement is to deepen students' understanding of the processes, structures, and identities that shape and have shaped human experiences in the United States.
CPUD courses represent the full range of lived identities and experiences in U.S. culture, revealing the structures and processes that have led to historical, social, cultural, artistic, political, legal, scientific, and scholarly patterns of privilege, exclusion and marginalization.
Designation Criteria
Courses satisfying this requirement use frameworks from different academic fields (such as but not limited to history, ethnic studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and religious studies) to explore how U.S. identity and experience have been shaped by a diverse array of intellectual and cultural influences and traditions.
In courses meeting this requirement, at least two-thirds of the course topics and materials must examine the forces that create, contest, or maintain power, identity and difference in the United States, with a focus on race, religion, ethnicity, class, disability, immigration status, language, gender, and/or sexuality.
Outcomes
Courses satisfying this requirement develop in students two or more of the following outcomes:
A critical awareness of and ability to examine race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, disability, immigration status, language, ability, and/or religion in the U.S. through: historical inquiry; the study of artistic, cultural, social, political, legal, and economic expressions; and/or the analysis of social and/or scientific data.
A critical understanding of and ability to analyze the contingent and unstable nature of cultural identities and relationships, as well as the specific ways individual, collective, and institutional systems of power and oppression in the U.S. have worked to normalize and naturalize those contingent identities.
An ability to apply methodological and/or experience-based approaches to investigate issues of diversity, equity, and structural inequalities in the U.S.
Regional Focus (CPRF)
The purpose of the Core Program Regional Focus (CPRF) requirement is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of at least one specific geographical, national, or cultural region of the world outside of the U.S. A CPRF course focuses on a region through unifying characteristics, which could be literary, artistic, religious, philosophical, economic, ecological, ideological, political, social, intellectual, linguistic, scientific, etc.
Designation Criteria
Courses satisfying this requirement examine a region outside of the United States without privileging a U.S.-centric perspective. Course descriptions should indicate the specific region and the unifying characteristics that define the region. Note: if more than half of a course examines connections between multiple regions or is intended to focus on people, objects or ideas that circulate across boundaries, then that course might be better designated as fulfilling the Core Program Global Connections (CPGC) requirement.
In courses meeting this requirement, at least two-thirds of the course topics and materials must include a focus on a specified region outside of the United States.
Outcomes
Courses satisfying this requirement develop in students three or more of the following outcomes:
- A critical understanding of institutions, culture, intellectual traditions, history, physical environment, and/or other significant aspects of a region outside the U.S.
- A critical understanding of a region’s culture as constructed by individuals and/or groups in that region, and their perspective on the forces that create, contest, or maintain power, identity and difference.
- A critical understanding of the significance of the global and geopolitical position of the selected region.
- An ability to apply methodological and/or experience-based approaches to investigate institutions, culture, intellectual traditions, history, and/or the physical environment in the region.
Global Connections (CPGC)
The purpose of the Core Program Global Connections (CPGC) requirement is to help students develop a global, transnational and/or comparative understanding of geographical, national, political or cultural regions of the world as well as the circulation of people, objects, institutions, and ideas across their boundaries.
Designation Criteria
Courses satisfying this requirement have a global or transnational perspective and/or a comparative framework. CPGC courses must explore how systems, ideas, or themes are implemented or manifested in two or more regions. The systems, themes, or ideas may include but are not limited to: literary, artistic, religious, philosophical, economic, environmental, ideological, political, social, intellectual, scientific, linguistic, etc.
In courses meeting this requirement, the central learning objective of the course must focus on comparisons, interactions, and/or interconnected systems, institutions, themes or ideas in two or more regions of the world or include discussion of the circulation of people, objects, and/or ideas across boundaries.
Outcomes
Courses satisfying this requirement develop in students two or more of the following outcomes:
- An ability to apply methodological and/or experience-based approaches to investigate similarities and differences in how systems and forms of cultural expression are interconnected in two or more regions.
- A critical understanding of the topics, practices, systems, or issues that provide a basis for the circulation of people and ideas across geographic, regional, national, state, and imperial boundaries.
- A critical understanding of how global institutions and/or systemic structures produce, reinforce or challenge hierarchies and inequ(al)ities.