Courses offered in the Contemporary Global Studies category must have the
following dimensions:
“Core:” Courses for this CART, which lack a follow-up (such as Natural Science
II, Philosophy II), need to be broadly-based surveys that provide a foundational
basis for further learning in the liberal-arts tradition. While this
general-education requirement entails some breadth emphasized over depth,
thematic topics can be used to organize information and appeal to both
professional and student interest. These should not be so narrow, however, that
they seem more suitable for advanced study. Courses that can and should be
offered for upper-level major curricula, especially from outside the traditional
liberal arts, are inappropriate for this Core CART. Selective moments of digging
deep into a subject are certainly necessary for developing student skills and
should be developed in these courses. Still, essential information about content
and methodology to understand global issues requires broad strokes when limited
to one course in one semester.
“Contemporary:” Students should understand how the world is in the condition it
is today, for good or ill. This quality requires dealing at least with human
activity that has taken place in the last century up to the present. Proper
understanding of these events may require going much deeper into the historical
past. Much of the human condition has existed for millennia. Likewise, more
emphasis could be placed on the much more recent past, the past decade or
half-century. Some problems have not been around that long. Yet overall,
students need to have this category provide them basic tools and knowledge about
most major institutions and attitudes that connect and divide people today.
“Global:” Students need to understand the worldwide dimensions of contemporary
problems. While any problem, from the Wyoming Valley to the Americans may have
global consequences, this category should exclude courses that are too
geographically narrow in conception. As such, this category cannot focus on
courses that might belong with the Foreign Cultures CART, even if they add
perspectives drawn from the social sciences. Nor should courses in this category
overemphasize the American dimensions of, or perspectives on, any problem, even
while we can hardly ignore America’s dominant political and cultural position.
Instructors should strive to avoid, or at least make clear for analysis, any
“hyphen-centrism,” whether of “American-,” “Euro-,” or any particular ethnicity
or gender. This category should not house “regional” studies either, even if
those regions include several different peoples, cultures, states, etc. It
should range across this planet’s surface, drawing in as many perspectives as
possible that contribute to understanding the institutions and attitudes that
have changed our shared past and are transforming our future. The course may be
taught by a survey that examines all areas of the world, or by global
comparative studies.
“Studies:” Courses in this category should also include interdisciplinary
approaches, especially those of the social sciences. The courses must
significantly engage both cultural issues (value, meanings, ideologies, etc.)
and structural issues (institutional arrangements, hierarchies, resource
allocation, power structures, etc.) Faculty whose specialty may be in other
areas (e.g. Business, Literature, Science, Philosophy) can offer courses in this
category, but they must clearly delineate why the proposed offering does not
better fit in another CART or major more closely connected to those disciplines.
One aspect of that explanation should be the application of interdisciplinary
social science themes, concerns, and interests (as well as, of course, the
general-core, contemporary, and global aspects listed above).