CU:

Core Curriculum: Cultural and Gender Diversity

(Revised 8/2008)

6. Cultural and Gender Diversity (3 semester hours). Courses fulfilling this requirement increase the student's understanding of the world's diversity and pluralism through the study of two broad and interrelated areas: (1) the nature and meaning of the categories of race, ethnicity, and gender; and (2) cultures other than those of Europe and the United States. This requirement explicitly identifies an awareness and understanding of pluralism as essential to a liberal education.

(1) Gender and Ethnic Diversity: Courses in this area are designed to expand the range of each student's understanding of the origin, definition, and experience of the categories of gender, ethnicity, and race. They apply new approaches to knowledge and scholarly inquiry and explore the ways in which nonsexist and nonracist language expand understanding of social groups. They are concerned with recovery of knowledge about individuals and groups excluded from traditional studies of societies and share the fundamental goal of identifying the way these social categories define and therefore shape human thought and experience.

(2) Non-Western Cultures: These courses are designed to expand the range of the student's understanding of cultures that are not derived principally from the western experience. A comparative perspective introduces students to the commonality and diversity of cultural responses to universal human problems. Each course seeks to cultivate insight into and respect for diversity by requiring students to explore a cultural world quite different from their own. Courses satisfying this requirement are intended to portray culture in the most integrated sense, including aspects of material adaptation, social pattern, ideas and values, and aesthetic achievement.

Students are required to pass 3 hours of course work from any course listed below. Students who take approved CU-Boulder course work to fulfill this requirement must take the course for a letter grade and receive a passing grade of D- or higher. Students who graduate with a major in ethnic studies are exempt from completing the cultural and gender diversity requirement.