Seminar on Relations Among Civilizations:
Clash, Fusion or Hybridization?
A series of lectures, discussions and presentations in English
Spring 2008
Professor Kim Yersu, Ph.D
Email: kimyersu@khu.ac.kr
Contact: 02 961 0998, 010 9924 3364
I
Course Description
This course deals with the issues on the relations among civilization raised mainly by
Samuel Huntington’s work The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
Topics include the nature and meaning of civilizations, universal civilization, the rise of
the West and Westernization, the rise of civilizational consciousness, the politics of
identity, the resurgence of non-Western civilizations such as Asian and Islamic, core
states and fault line conflicts, and contour of a multicivilizational world.
The composition of this course is twofold: a) a series of lecture-based seminars
focusing on the content comprehension of the above issues as discussed in Huntington’s
work; and b) follow-up sessions for further enhancement of linguistic competence in
using English as a medium of communication.
Successful completion of this seminar will count as fulfillment of the foreign language
requirement for the students of the Graduate School of NGO Studies.
II
Assignments
-Summary reports on selected reading material
-Term paper on a selected topic
III
IV
Evaluation
-Class participation
40%
-Summary report and presentation
20%
-Term paper
40%
Course Schedule
A detailed course schedule will be announced at the beginning of the seminar.
V
Reading
-Selected parts of Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking
Of World Order, (1996, Simon & Schuster, New York)
-Selected parts of Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, revised and abridged by
the author and Jane Caplan, (1972, Oxford University Press)