Global Core
Major Cultures is a significant required component of the Core Curriculum. Under the requirement, Columbia College students must take 2 approved courses in non-Western cultures. The approved courses are grouped into African Civilization, East Asian Civilization, Middle Eastern Civilization, South Asian Civilization, and South American Civilization. They are then sub-divided into List A courses (introductory), List B courses (more depth), and List C courses (impact of the cultural traditions in the U.S.). Students must either take two List A courses, in any of the civilizations, or a List A course and either a List B or a List C course in the same civilization.
History
The De Bary Report of the 1980s recommended Major Cultures develop seminar classesin various non-European textual traditions. Since that time, Major Cultures has included a number of such classes (including the vaunted Asian Humanities and the slightly less laudable African Civilization) but has otherwise evolved into a distribution requirement involving mostly lecture classes culled from the lists of various departments.
The 2007 hunger strike has resulted, provisionally, in the administration's promise that Major Cultures may be reformed into a single madatory seminar-style class. Officially, the university is only "seeking new syllabi" from departments traditionally involved with the requirement. The administration noted that a $50 million fundraising drive would be required to implement this scheme.
Options
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.
