Author Archives: Michael Druffel

Course Goals

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