As part of the College’s General Education Curriculum, this course is designed to enhance your understanding of world cultures and global issues. Students successfully completing this course will develop the following:

Oral and written communication skills – Students will produce well-reasoned written or oral arguments using evidence to support conclusions.

Critical thinking skills – Students will evaluate evidence and arguments critically or analytically.

Information literacy – Students will gather, interpret, and assess information from a variety of sources and points of view.

World Cultures and Global Issues Literary proficiency – Students will identify and apply the fundamental concepts and methods of a discipline or interdisciplinary field exploring world cultures and literature.

At the end of the course, you will have:

• Familiarity with the methods and vocabulary of literary analysis
• Experience with close reading
• A basic knowledge of a text’s formal properties, including the conventions of genre and various literary devices
• An understanding of the role that story-telling, drama, and song play in the formation and expression of culture, as well as the social and historical contexts and importance of the assigned texts.

And you will be able to:

• Discover common artistic, philosophical, and religious themes and ideas within and among works, poems, stories, and plays
• Develop analytical and interpretive strategies in order to better understand texts, and to learn synthesis, analysis, evaluation, critical thinking, and research skills.
• Critically analyze a literary text, identifying key themes and passages and showing awareness of its role in a broader social and cultural reality
• Develop well-reasoned written and oral arguments using evidence to support conclusions