Human Perspectives Unit 1 And 2 Answers

[Julian Gladyshev]

GlobalPerspectives courses in the spring quarters investigate several different global phenomena, enabling you to make comparative analyses and locate your own actions within a global context. Most courses are 4 units and structured with faculty-led lectures (2x/week, 50 minutes) and fellow-led sections (2x/week, 50 minutes), but some courses are taught as 3-unit seminars meeting twice a week for 80 minutes. Unlike autumn and winter, most spring courses have required lectures.

The progress of LGBTQ+ rights over the last half century has been remarkably swift and absolutely global. Pride parades and marriage rights have become emblems of a global movement that seems to transcend culture. This course asks what has allowed LGBTQ+ issues to become leading indicators of a certain kind of liberalization and modernization. What is the road LGBTQ+ rights took from the Stonewall Inn in 1969 to Pride Parades in Minsk, Kolkata and Nuuk, Greenland by 2015? This course will highlight the concepts by which historians, social scientists and political theorists have interrogated the problematic underbelly of this story of global triumph. What gets left out when we frame the course of LGBTQ+ history as somehow moving from Lower Manhattan to the rest of the world? Many academics studying LGBTQ+ history worry about the eurocentrism inherent in this way of telling the story this way, and about how it truncates our understanding of LGBTQ+ culture. After all, are LGBTQ+ identities and rights one size-fits-all?

How do we balance the benefits of industrialization against environmental justice? Is technological innovation a reason for optimism about the future of the environment? What do we lose as the biodiversity of the planet declines? This course engages with the big questions around the future of environmental sustainability from a global perspective, touching on climate change, energy, natural resources, waste, and technology, as well as the human impacts. Students will not only consider how global citizenship is informed by a responsibility towards the environment, but will have the opportunity to develop a practical solution to one of the key sustainability challenges.

What is a virus? How do viruses affect our lives? Does the virus make us distinctly human? This course challenges you to think beyond conventional disciplinary distinctions through questions about the impact of biology on human behavior as well as the potential of humans to shape biology through genetic engineering. Through creative projects, students will engage the study of individual viruses in their microbial as well as cultural context.

Science fiction thinks about how science and technology transform human society, values, and everyday experiences in ways good or bad. By projecting both utopia and dystopia, sf reveals and critiques technology-induced social malaises and keeps hopes alive by projecting better futures, testifying to the ceaseless human potential for self-renewal in sustaining civilization on Earth. This course asks the two-fold question: How can humans of diverse cultures harness technoscientific innovations while preserving humanist values and maintain a sustainable economy and civilization? How do narratives of utopia and dystopia depict the anthropocentric domination of nature and the exploitation working classes through the misuse and abuse of technology?

Advances in genomics, artificial intelligence and neurotechnologies are expected to transform biomedicine. Genomics has been applied to prenatal testing in order to screen for genetic disorders, improve cancer treatment, and diagnose rare disorders. Artificial intelligence has been applied to improving areas of healthcare such as diagnostic tests and developing potential medical treatments. Neurotechnologies have generated hopes of providing improved prosthetics or treatment for people with neurological and mental health disorders. However, as these biotechnologies are developed and implemented, they raise important questions regarding justice and equity. Who benefits from these advances in science and technology, and who is excluded? Is research and development in these areas proceeding in ways that are inclusive of diverse perspectives and populations?

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time: Renaissance-Florence, Transnational-Accra, Imperial Beijing. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for his course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation).

It is often stated that we live in a global age. What does this mean? How new is this phenomenon? What does it mean to think about the human experience from a global perspective? And, why does it matter? In this course, we will examine globalism and globalization in historical and contemporary contexts; engage with theoretical frameworks and a range of case studies from a variety of national/regional contexts; and use these to analyze global economic, political, environmental, and socio-cultural networks, trends, and issues, exploring the interconnectedness of the local and the global. We will consider how universal is the human experience and how the answer to this question might impact the future of humanity.

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Human beings create, learn, share, and adapt to culture. The study of culture examines the socially transmitted beliefs, values, institutions, behaviors, traditions and way of life of a group of people; it also encompasses other cultural attributes and products, such as language, literature, music, arts and artifacts, and foods. Students come to understand that human cultures exhibit both similarities and differences, and they learn to see themselves both as individuals and as members of a particular culture that shares similarities with other cultural groups, but is also distinctive. In a multicultural, democratic society and globally connected world, students need to understand the multiple perspectives that derive from different cultural vantage points.

Cultures are dynamic and change over time. The study of culture prepares students to ask and answer questions such as: What is culture? What roles does culture play in human and societal development? What are the common characteristics across cultures? How is unity developed within and among cultures? What is the role of diversity and how is it maintained within a culture? How do various aspects of culture such as belief systems, religious faith, or political ideals, influence other parts of a culture such as its institutions or literature, music, and art? How does culture change over time to accommodate different ideas, and beliefs? How does cultural diffusion occur within and across communities, regions, and nations?

Through experience, observation, and reflection, students will identify elements of culture as well as similarities and differences among cultural groups across time and place. They will acquire knowledge and understanding of culture through multiple modes, including fiction and non-fiction, data analysis, meeting and conversing with peoples of divergent backgrounds, and completing research into the complexity of various cultural systems.

In schools, this theme typically appears in units and courses dealing with geography, history, sociology, and anthropology, as well as multicultural topics across the curriculum. Young learners can explore concepts of likenesses and differences among cultural groups through school subjects such as language arts, mathematics, science, music, and art. In social studies, learners interact with class members and discover culturally-based likenesses and differences. They begin to identify the cultural basis for some celebrations and ways of life in their community and in examples from across the world. In the middle grades, students begin to explore and ask questions about the nature of various cultures, and the development of cultures across time and place. They learn to analyze specific aspects of culture, such as language and beliefs, and the influence of culture on human behavior. As students progress through high school, they can understand and use complex cultural concepts such as adaptation, assimilation, acculturation, diffusion, and dissonance that are drawn from anthropology, sociology, and other disciplines to explain how culture and cultural systems function.

Studying the past makes it possible for us to understand the human story across time. The historical experiences of societies, peoples and nations reveal patterns of continuity and change. Historical analysis enables us to identify continuities over time in core institutions, values, ideals, and traditions, as well as processes that lead to change within societies and institutions, and that result in innovation and the development of new ideas, values and ways of life.

Knowledge and understanding of the past enable us to analyze the causes and consequences of events and developments, and to place these in the context of the institutions, values and beliefs of the periods in which they took place. Study of the past makes us aware of the ways in which human beings have viewed themselves, their societies and the wider world at different periods of time.

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