As a Spanish major I’ve had to take numerous culture, literature, and diversity courses, as well as a wide range of gen ed courses and electives. Among the classes I’ve taken are Biology of Social Issues, Intro to Anthropology, Berlin: the Global City, Intercultural Understanding, and assorted international literature and cinema courses. These courses come from the Spanish, German, Biology, and Comp-Lit departments, but they all have something in common. They all taught me about the range of ideas, beliefs, and cultures in the world. Some focused on one culture in particular (like Spanish Cinema and Berlin: the Global City), but others covered an assortment of cultures or cultural aspects (such as Biology of Social Issues, Intro to Anthropology, and the Latin American Film Festival). Intercultural Understanding with Carole Cloutier gave me a broader way of looking at other cultures and people by showing me the scope of difference in the underlying values people hold that make people act in different ways. This taught me a new way of thinking about “weird foreign customs” and made me a more open-minded, compassionate, and understanding global citizen.

All of these classes have helped me build a more complex and in-depth understanding of others, both as individuals and as products of their cultures. To go a step further, this deeper understanding and openness helps me adapt better to new people and situations, and even helps me adjust more easily to different environments when I travel. I know that if I have a German coworker who invites me for dinner at six, the appropriate and respectful time to show up is exactly at six, but I shouldn’t be offended if someone from a more people-time oriented culture is late when I ask them to dinner, because it is not meant as a disrespect.

These classes have also introduced me to wonderful artists, writers, musicians, texts, and films that I otherwise would never have experienced. Pan’s Labyrinth is a fascinating exploration of horrific fantasy (or is it really fantasy?) colliding with reality. Almodovar created morally bizarre works in the 70s and 80s that would shock people in America today. Senocak wrote a fascinating novel called Perilous Kinship about the interactions of Jewish, Turkish, and ethnic German people, particularly those who fit two or more of these labels, that can help us understand the politics and the history of one of Germany’s most immigrant-rich cities. Appadurai wrote a text suggesting that the world be viewed through five “scapes,” changing the way we think about the world from the idea of a handful of specific connections to a broader ‘landscape’ of many smaller movements and connections.

These classes have built on each other, referenced the same texts, and brought in similar ideas, but then spun new concepts into the mix. The same Appadurai text has been used in three or four of my classes to help us observe and understand the world, from China to Cuba to Germany. In each case, the themes of the text applied to different countries and different ‘scapes’ and had different implications, but it was useful in all of them. Together, all these courses have served to broaden my understanding of the people and cultures of the world, and to give me new strategies for learning about cultures I haven’t studied yet.