Columbia
The Global Core requirement asks students to engage directly with the variety of civilizations and the diversity of traditions that, along with the West, have formed the world and continue to interact in it today.
Courses in the Global Core typically explore the cultures of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East in an historical context. These courses are organized around a set of primary materials produced in these traditions and may draw from texts or other forms of media, as well as from oral sources or performance, broadly defined.
Global Core courses fall into two categories, and can be, on occasion, a hybrid of the two types: those with a comparative, multidisciplinary, or interdisciplinary focus on specific cultures or civilizations, tracing their existence across a significant span of time, and may include Europe and/or the U.S.; and those that address a common theme or set of analytic questions comparatively (and may include Europe and the U.S.). 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 and/or spatially expansive.
Students must complete two courses from the approved list of Global Core courses for a letter grade.
The menus of courses has about 100 entries.
Princeton
Culture and Differences Requirement involves a menu with about 40 courses that can be searched here. Specifically, for the entering Class of 2024 and beyond, a new general education distribution requirement has been established in the area of “Culture and Difference” (CD). For A.B. students this may be satisfied either alone or concurrently with another distribution area. For B.S.E. students this will represent an additional area in which students may elect to satisfy Humanities and Social Science distribution requirements.
The requirement in Culture and Difference begins with the premise that human beings experience the world through their respective cultures—the ideas, meanings, norms, and habituations – that are represented in the arts and literature, laws and institutions, and social practices of human societies whose histories and power relationships often differ from one another. Found across a wide range of disciplines, these courses use cultural analysis to trace the ways in which human beings construct meaning both within and across groups. Culture and Difference courses offer students a lens through which other forms of disciplinary inquiry are enhanced, critiqued, and clarified, often paying close attention to the experiences and perspectives of groups who have historically been excluded from dominant cultural narratives or structures of social power. The requirement in Culture and Difference is the only requirement that may be satisfied either independently or concurrently with another distribution area.
Chicago
Students take at least two quarters in Civilization Studies:
Civilization studies provide an in-depth examination of the development and accomplishments of one of the world’s great civilizations through direct encounters with significant and exemplary documents and monuments. These sequences complement the literary and philosophical study of texts central to the humanities sequences, as well as the study of synchronous social theories that shape basic questions in the social science sequences. Their approach stresses the grounding of events and ideas in historical context and the interplay of events, institutions, ideas, and cultural expressions in social change. The courses emphasize texts rather than surveys as a way of getting at the ideas, cultural patterns, and social pressures that frame the understanding of events and institutions within a civilization. And they seek to explore a civilization as an integrated entity, capable of developing and evolving meanings that inform the lives of its citizens.
Stanford
The Ways of Thinking and Doing requirement involves taking one course from an engaging diversity menu.
The Ways of Thinking, Ways of Doing (Ways) breadth system takes a unique perspective on the idea of “breadth” and a liberal education. Unlike the disciplinary breadth requirements of many traditional institutions, Ways focuses on two other important aspects of university education. First, we emphasize both “thinking” and “doing”—that is, teaching you how to view the world differently, how to conceptualize it from various angles, and how to use those new intellectual capacities in new ways. Second, it embraces the value Stanford places on a broad educational experience — the Ways provide you with a set of complementary capacities for building your own overall intellectual profile.
Engaging Diversity (ED) courses have a rigorous analysis of diversity as a constituent element across social and cultural domains. ED courses show how diversity is produced, understood, and enacted. In a globally interconnected world, it is ethically and practically crucial to develop an awareness and understanding of differences. By gaining knowledge about diversity and public scholarship, your understanding of the social contexts that frame our communication and collaboration with one another will be extended, and your ability to respond to cultural challenges enhanced. You might gain knowledge in the ED Way by taking courses in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, History, Anthropology, English, or Feminist Studies, among several other areas
Berkeley
The American Cultures Requirement is a Berkeley campus requirement, one that all undergraduate students at Berkeley need to pass in order to graduate.
You may take an American Cultures course any time during your undergraduate career at Berkeley. The requirement was instituted in 1991 to introduce students to the diverse cultures of the United States through a comparative framework. Courses are offered in more than fifty departments in many different disciplines at both the lower and upper division level.
Faculty members from many departments teach American Cultures courses, but all courses have a common framework. The courses focus on themes or issues in United States history, society, or culture; address theoretical or analytical issues relevant to understanding race, culture, and ethnicity in American society; take substantial account of groups drawn from at least three of the following: African Americans, indigenous peoples of the United States, Asian Americans, Chicano/Latino Americans, and European Americans; and are integrative and comparative in that students study each group in the larger context of American society, history, or culture.
This is not an ethnic studies requirement, nor a Third World cultures requirement, nor an adjusted Western civilization requirement. These courses focus upon how the diversity of America’s constituent cultural traditions have shaped and continue to shape American identity and experience.
Dartmouth
There is a world culture requirement. Each student must take at least one course in each of the following cultural areas before graduation: Western Cultures (W), Non-Western Cultures (NW), and Culture and Identity (CI). Each menu has 100+ items. They can be searched here.
USC
The diversity requirement is designed to provide undergraduate students with the background knowledge and analytical skills necessary to understand and respect differences between groups of people. The diversity requirement must be met by all students who began college at USC or elsewhere in fall 1993 or later. It can be met by passing any one course carrying the designation “m” for multiculturalism. You may view current diversity course offerings in the Schedule of Classes by selecting “diversity courses” on the left hand column under the desired semester.
Students should understand the potential resources and conflicts arising from human differences on the contemporary American and international scene. Students will increasingly need to grapple with issues arising from different dimensions of human diversity such as age, disability, ethnicity, gender, language, race, religion, sexual orientation, and social class.
These dimensions and their social and cultural consequences will have important ramifications for students’ personal, professional and intellectual lives, both for the time they are students and in later life. Students will gain exposure to analytical frameworks within which these issues are to be understood and addressed, including social, political, cultural, ethical and public policy analyses. It is the university’s goal to prepare students through the study of human differences for responsible citizenship in an increasingly pluralistic and diverse society.
Pennsylvania
There is no university-wide requirement. The College of Arts and Sciences requires one Cross-Cultural Analysis course from this menu of courses that has about 100 entries.
College students are required to take at least one course to develop their ability to understand and interpret the cultures of peoples with histories different from their own. The focus may be on the past or the present and it should expose students to distinctive sets of values, attitudes and methods of organizing experience that may not be obtained from American cultures. This exposure to the internal dynamic of another society should lead students to understand the values and practices that define their own cultural framework.
And they must take one Diversity in the US course taken form this menu of courses that has about 50 entries including Facing America
The Cultural Diversity in the U.S. Requirement complements the Cross-Cultural Analysis Requirement and aims to develop students’ knowledge of the history, dynamic cultural systems and heterogeneous populations that make up the national culture of the United States. College students are required to take at least one course to develop the skills necessary for understanding the population and culture of the United States as it becomes increasingly diverse. Through historical inquiry, the study of cultural expressions and the analysis of social data, students will develop their ability to examine issues of diversity with a focus on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class and religion. The goal is to equip graduates with the ability to become perceptive and engaged members of society.
Michigan
There is a race and ethnicity requirement in the LSA College.
At some point before graduation, students must receive credit for one course of at least three credits chosen from a list of Race and Ethnicity (R&E) courses offered each term in the LSA Course Guide. These courses address issues arising from racial or ethnic intolerance and meet the following criteria. All courses satisfying the requirement must provide discussion concerning:
- the meaning of race, ethnicity, and racism;
- racial and ethnic intolerance and resulting inequality as it occurs in the United States or elsewhere;
- comparisons of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, social class, or gender.
Every course satisfying the requirement must devote substantial, but not necessarily exclusive, attention to the required content. Although it is hoped that many of these courses will focus on the United States, it is not required that they do so. Courses that deal with these issues in other societies, or that study them comparatively, may also meet the requirement.
