Core Themes

All Core courses will fit into one of the three themes below.  Students will take one 4-credit Core course covering each of these themes (total of 12 credits).  The courses are meant to be integrative in nature and therefore each theme will naturally assimilate several subjects and divisions into a thematic course structure.

Communities and Environments 

Includes such topics as:  the relationships between human groups and their social, natural, constructed, and aesthetic environments; the social and cultural institutions (e.g., family, state, science, religion) that govern these relationships; issues of global prosperity, justice, and security; ecological balance and sustainability; the ethical foundations and environmental consequences of the human inventions (e.g. biomedical and information technologies), conventions (e.g., international commerce and communication) and norms that organize life on local and global scales.

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Self and Identities 

Includes such topics as:  definitions and creative expressions of the physical, psychological, philosophical, and spiritual self; the relationship of self to "other," including the principles that integrate and divide people along lines of gender, generation, tribe, race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and culture; the complexities and dynamics of identity formation, maintenance, and change in light of social and historical context; the means for mediating among and reconciling inherited perceptions of difference in order to build or maintain consensual and just political orders; critical evaluation of ideologies of, and attitudes about, commonality and difference.

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Change and Continuity 

Includes such topics as:  the rhythms and complexities of historical and cultural change and continuity; the freedom of individuals and groups to make and re-make history; the factors (material, psychological, and institutional) that inhibit the range of social and political invention; the concepts of progress/development and custom/tradition; the varieties of change (evolutionary, revolutionary, devolutionary) and their animating conditions; the nature of causality; the difference between teleological and contingent explanations of events; the roles of purpose and chance in everyday life; the relationship of past, present, and future.

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For more information about the Core Curriculum, please contact the Core Office at 303-871-4577

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