Global Humanities is an exploration of human experience. The course is guided by one overarching question, "What does it mean to be human?" The question will be investigated through select cultural records, art, music, and ideas drawn from the dawn of civilization to the 21st Century, deepened by acquaintance with literature from around the world, and facilitated by various supplementary essential questions. Those include: "How does where we are impact who we are?" "In what way to human beings live?" "How, why, and in what distinct ways do human beings record and value their experiences? But also, "How do we know what we know?" "What is the difference between: knowing and believing; truth and falsehood; beauty and ugliness; justice and tyranny; wisdom and ignorance; faith and reason; history and fiction; what is right and what is good."
Central to our work is skill development: historical and literary skills and those implicit to sound scholarship, constructive learning, and cogent writing. Additionally, constructive conversation skills and mindfulness strategies enhance our social learning environment to assure mutual understanding and respect. Encouraging critical and imaginative thinking, the course is not a memory exercise; it is a thoughtful exploration of questions and ideas, sources and how they are read, collaboration and personal discovery. Throughout the course, efforts are made to link the past with the present, to connect different peoples, cultures and events with those in our world at present, and to facilitate consideration of how each learner's life often echos that of the human community, past and present. Multidisciplinary and multicultural in character, the course is an opportunity to explore humanity in all its wondrous variety.