Culture and Values

Culture and Values is one of four options to fulfill the remaining 8 World Engagement credits of the General Education Program.

Culture and Values (CV) courses seek to deepen intercultural understanding. These courses engage with and reflect relations among specific culturally embedded norms, behaviors, traditions, claims, and commitments. Courses designated as CV have one or more of the following criterion as their central organizing objective:

1. Analysis of varied cultural norms and traditions and their interrelations. Examples might include:
   1. Articulating one's own culturally normative values and practices, including the assumptions, reasons, and arguments that contribute to their adoption;
   2. Developing knowledge and understanding of the diversity both among and within cultures and traditions;
   3. Evaluating conflicts between particular cultural norms or values, exploring their significance, and assessing the possibility of their resolution.
2. Examination of values in cultural context. Examples might include:
   1. Examining particular cultural differences in light of historical, social, intellectual, or other contexts, including differences that deepen one's understanding of self and others;
   2. Critiquing the values expressed within religious, philosophical, aesthetic, political, or scientific discourses and practice, as realized in one or more societies;
   3. Evaluating critically the values expressed both in the personal choices of individuals and in historically shifting institutions, societies, and even civilizations as a whole.
3. Engagement directly with varied cultural materials of an artistic, intellectual, or religious nature in ways that deepen intercultural understanding. Examples might include:
   1. Identifying textual, visual, aural or other materials whose interpretation involves challenges of an intercultural nature;
   2. Developing ability to interpret textual, visual, aural narratives from different angles for comprehensive meaning beyond preconceived notions;
   3. Considering standards for the evaluation of claims of a political, philosophical, religious, or ethical nature, particularly when those standards are applied in intercultural contexts.