Global Core

Major Cultures is a significant component of the Core Curriculum, introduced thanks to Professor De Bary. Under the MC requirement, Columbia College students are required to take 2 courses in non-Western cultures. The approved courses are grouped into African Civ, East Asian Civ, Middle Eastern Civ, South Asian Civ, and South American Civ. Get your Third World on...

East Asian civilization

Whatever you do, stay well clear of ASCE V2002: Intro to Major Topics in East Asian Civ. The course is supposedly the East Asian counterpart to Contemporary Civilization. In reality, it tries to cover 3000+ years of Chinese, Japanese and Korean history. Of course, this is an absurd goal. You'll barely have the time to learn anything about Korea, and your knowledge of China and Japan will be rather superficial. For example, most classes spend just one class on Confucius, who is overwhelmingly the most important philosopher in Chinese history. By comparison, most CC classes spend up to 3 or 4 sessions on philosophers like Plato, Smith, Marx, and Freud, none of whom affected their cultures anywhere near as much as Confucius.