Course Description

This LA Gateway course has a special topic: Give Peace a Chance. 

This course focuses on social issues throughout history from a global perspective. In addition to learning about historical and cultural shifts since the Renaissance, students closely read and analyze works of art from creators who have advocated for peace, social justice, and nonviolent solutions to conflict. Many approaches to history focus on conflict, war, and oppression and many cultural artifacts have been created that glorify war and conquest. While the study of violence is never far from the study of peace, this course aims to emphasize individuals within social movements since the Renaissance who have focused their creative output and social interventions on ways to develop a more peaceful, equitable world.

A study of representative samples of literature, art, and music of various periods and cultures from around the world from Renaissance to Present. The study of the interrelationships of the arts and their philosophies emphasizes an understanding of human nature, the values of human life, and the connection between past and present cultural contexts.

This section relates topics in thematically in HUMA 1302 to questions of war, peace, social justice and conflict resolution. The section also discusses the diversity, complexity and interdependence of the world community and current global issues.

This course will focus on close readings of texts and analysis of works of art from creators who have advocated for peace, social justice, and nonviolent solutions to conflict. Many approaches to history focus on conflict, war, and oppression and many cultural artifacts have been created that glorify war and conquest. While the study of violence is never far from the study of peace, this course aims to emphasize the works of individuals since the Renaissance who have focused their creative output and social interventions on ways to develop a more peaceful, equitable world.

Students must be accepted into the Honors program to take this course. A passing score or the equivalent on the reading portion of the TSI test is required.

Course Rationale

The study of the humanities from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective affords the student the opportunity not only to acquire a deeper appreciation of particular works of art but also to gain a larger perspective on the work of art as an expression of the human spirit in a particular time and place.

Grading/evaluation:

• 70% -- Discussion Posts and Responses to Peers
• 20% -- Journal Entries
• 10% -- Participation/Attendance

Discussions: Students will review the required texts and respond to peers. Students are required to reply to two (2) of their peers in discussions with at least 5 substantive sentences the Ask a Question, Answer a Question format.

Journals: Students will provide individual responses to questions about the course material in a reflective fashion, including thoughts, emotions, memories, and other takeaways.

Participation/Attendance: Students must attend each class and contribute positively to the group in order to receive full credit for participation/attendance.

• Gloria Fiero, Landmarks in Humanities, 5th Edition. ISBN10: 1260220753, ISBN13: 9781260220759
• Johan Galtung's "A Mini Theory of Peace"
• Frederick Douglass’ "What to the Slave is 4th of July?”
• Sean Sherman's "The Thanksgiving Tale We Tell Is a Harmful Lie"
• Sojourner Truth's  “Ain’t I a Woman" and “The Great Sin of Prejudice Against Color”
• Douglas P. Fry’s “Life Without War?” 
• Margaret Mead’s “Warfare is Only an Invention – Not a Biological Necessity” 
• Walt Whitman's "The Mystic Trumpeter" 
• Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”
• Sigmund Freud’s “Why War?” 
• United Nations (UN), "Universal Declaration of Human Rights"
• Albert Camus’ “Neither Victims Nor Executioners"
• Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Conscientious Objector”
• Mohandas Gandhi’s “The Gospel of Non-violence” 
• David S. Wills' "The Beat Generation at War"
• Savannah Cox' "The Hippie Lifestyle"
• Victoria A. Bonney’s “Where are You Now, Antiwar Activists?” 
• Langston Hughes' "Let America Be America Again"
• Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
• Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s “No Future without Forgiveness” 
• bell hooks’ “Feminist Politics: Where We Stand"
• Sarah Ahmad’s “The True Spirit of Jihad” 
• Nemonte Nenquimo's "This is my Message to the Western World"
• Aldo Leopold’s “The Land Ethic”
• Pope Francis' “Speech to the United Nations, 2015"
• The Dalai Lama XIV, “A Human Approach to World Peace”  
• John Paul Lederach’s "Conflict Transformation" 

The course will be organized according to the following topics, highlighting particular time periods, political conflicts, artists, and thinkers:

• Introduction to Peace & Conflict Studies and Global Studies
• Dominant vs. Counternarratives
• Protestant Reformation
• Conflict Styles
• Absolute Power and Empire
• Religion in the English Commonwealth, the American Colonies, and the Quakers
• African and Indigenous American Cultures
• Positive vs. Negative Peace, The Scientific Revolution
• The Enlightenment
• Revolution and Democracy
• Types of Violence
• Transatlantic Slave Trade, Indigenous American Genocide
• Human Needs, Movements and You
• Naturalism and Evolution
• Romanticism and Transcendentalism
• Mysticism
• The Industrial Revolution, Realism, and the American Civil War
• Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and You
• Labor Movements, Marxism, Russian and Chinese Communist Revolutions
• Psychoanalysis, Modernist Artistic Movements
• The World Wars and Art
• Human Rights, Existentialism, and the Cold War
• Nonviolent Resistance, Strategic Peacebuilding, Anti-War Demonstrations
• The Beat Generation and the Hippie Movement 
• The Harlem Renaissance and Magical Realism in Latin America
• Civil Rights Movement in America, Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa
• Feminism and LGBTQIA+ Rights
• Nonviolent Communication, Perception Checking, and Modern Theology
• Ecology, and Sustainability, and Climate Change
• Buddhism, Meditation, and Inner Peace
• Current Global Issues and Conflict Transformation
• Humanity, Peace, and You

Departmental Course Student Learning Outcomes

After successful completion of a Humanities course, a student should be able to:

• Humanistic Inquiry: Describe and analyze artifacts from distinct times and places with regard to their cultural contexts and human values.

After successful completion of this Peace & Conflict Studies course, students should be able to:

• Content Knowledge: Apply key concepts in Peace & Conflict Studies.
• Peace & Conflict in Context: Analyze situations of peace and conflict within specific disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts.
• Personal Reflection: Represent personal experience and evaluate how concepts in Peace & Conflict Studies may inform one’s worldview, self-concept, values, behaviors, relationships, and/or aspirations.
• Social Responsibility: Apply Peace & Conflict Studies concepts practically and ethically at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, local, national, and/or global levels.

After completion of this Global Studies course, students should be able to:

• Cultural Values: Demonstrate a heightened and more critical awareness of one’s own cultural assumptions, ethical judgments, and implicit biases (e.g. ethnocentrism, racism, ageism, sexism) to interact effectively and ethically across cultures.
• Interdependence: Identify the interrelated nature of the actions and impacts of individuals, groups, and institutions at the local, regional, national, and global levels.
• Globalization: Analyze the interrelated impact of global structures (such as social, cultural, religious, environmental, political, and/or economic) on aspects of nations, regions, communities, and individuals. 
• Social Justice: Evaluate existing structures of the world (e.g. at national, global, organizational, and cultural levels) through application of human rights and human security principles in areas such as food, health, education, climate, gender equity, clean water and energy, technology, etc.
• Global Responsibility: Students will explain how they can integrate GS concepts into aspects of one’s own life in order to build equitable and sustainable change in the world.

At the end of this General Education course, a student should be able to do one or more of the following:

• Communication Skills: Develop, interpret, and express ideas and information through written, oral and visual communication that is adapted to purpose, structure, audience, and medium.
• Critical Thinking Skills: Gather, analyze, synthesize, evaluate and apply information for the purposes of innovation, inquiry, and creative thinking.
• Personal Responsibility: Identify and apply ethical principles and practices to decision-making by connecting choices, actions and consequences
• Social Responsibility (Civic and Cultural Awareness): Analyze differences and commonalities among peoples, ideas, aesthetic traditions, and cultural practices to include intercultural competence, knowledge of civic responsibility, and the ability to engage effectively in regional, national, and global communities.