HUM 177A/B
Area V Culture, Civilization & Global Understanding REVISED - April, 2014
Expectations for the educated person are realized in Area V specifically as the
recognition and acknowledgement of interrelationships of all aspects of human
endeavor. How political decisions yield artistic manifestations, how science may be
politicized by social expectations, and how art can provoke revolution all instantiate the
connections of knowledge by relating insights from multiple fields of study and activity.
The global perspective is about original insights into the complexities of the human
condition. In their readings and other artistic explorations, students recognize the
influences of all on all across human cultures.
Students shall be able to:
SLO 1: compare systematically the ideas, values, images, cultural artifacts, economic
structures, technological developments, and/or attitudes of people from more than one
culture outside the U.S. To be able to articulate systematically the ways values,
artifacts, attitudes and technology are distinctive in comparing cultures across multiple
contexts, not only will students explore readings and renderings of images and designs
from different cultures, they will also have the opportunity to consider and compare
recurring catastrophic actions such as the circumstances in which genocide has
occurred, focusing on the Holocaust and other 20th and 21st century examples,
comparing the instances themselves, as well as the history and attitudes of the
normative cultures of the victims and of the perpetrators (from Lecture 18). Another
example will serve as an assignment to address the origins, goals, and philosophical
underpinnings of anti-colonialist movements in Africa and Asia, and examine how their
cultural background and history helped shape the specific response of each, and the
importance of religion, Gandhian non-violence, or Fanon-inspired violence in defining
their cause (both theoretically and practically; Lecture 25).
SLO2: identify the historical context of ideas and cultural traditions outside the U.S. and
how they have influenced American culture. Traditions and political constructs from
outside the U.S. have influenced American culture dramatically. The sources of WWI
and WWII in Europe, the impact of technological advances on warfare, the effects of the
war on the nations of Europe, and the differing cultural responses to the war as seen in
the art of European cultures are some of the most transformative changes (lectures 8, 9,
12, 17, 19). In a separate library research assignment, students will work in small
groups to create oral seminar reports on the changes in European culture, for example,
by comparing entries in the 11th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (last full prewar edition) and the 14th Edition (first full post-war edition).
SLO 3: explain how a culture outside the U.S. has changed in response to internal and
external pressures. Some of the most distinctively influenced cultures in this way can
be seen when a variety of social, economic, and political aspirations have as their goal a
desire for an authentic independence, both national and individual, from an African
Ujamaa, and a European Velvet Revolution, to an Asian Tienanmen Square, and the Arab
Spring (Lecture 30).