Global Core

Major Cultures was a significant required component of the Core Curriculum. As of fall 2008, it is being replaced by a new requirement known as the Global Core.

Under the original Major Cultures requirement, Columbia College students had to take 2 approved courses in non-Western cultures. The approved courses were grouped into African Civilization, East Asian Civilization, Middle Eastern Civilization, South Asian Civilization, and South American Civilization. They were 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 had to 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.

In its current incarnation, the Global Core requirement simplifies this process, requiring two of any class on the list of approved courses, regardless of their relationship to one another. Eventually, Global Core classes are supposed to be reformed into in-depth seminars with the same rigor as Contemporary Civilization or Lit Hum, modeled on the likes of the African Civilizations or Asian Hum seminars.

History

The De Bary Report of the 1980s recommended Major Cultures develop seminar classes in various non-European textual traditions. Since that time, Major Cultures included a number of such classes (including the vaunted Asian Humanities and the slightly less laudable African Civilization) but otherwise evolved into a distribution requirement involving mostly lecture classes culled from the lists of various departments.

The 2007 hunger strike resulted, provisionally, in the administration's promise that Major Cultures may be reformed into a single madatory seminar-style class. Officially, the university was 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.

With the 2008 announcement of the reform of Major Cultures as the "Global Core," the requirement is finally on track to return to the De Bary Report's recommended dedicated seminar format.

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.