Courses in the FIG:
UGST 109 FIG Seminar
TIME | BUILDING | CRN | 1 Credit
Did you know that the UO has a world-class art museum with rare Asian prints and video installations? The world’s largest public collection of Japanese shrine stickers is in the UO Library? Our campus has a videogame library and a Vietnam research center? Our campus buildings are named after people whose lives and work have bridged Oregon and Asia? The first known American to live in Japan was from Oregon? And did you know that you can study Asian histories, religions, politics, global relations, classics, popular cultures, and food at UO? And use this knowledge in many kinds of careers?
Our FIG will tour UO resources related to Asia and learn about how interactions with Asia have shaped our UO culture. We will meet with librarians, curators, study abroad ambassadors, professors from across campus, and other specialists. We will learn about important people in UO history, including Gertrude Bass Warner (founder of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art), the Yasui family (for whom a residence hall is named), and Vietnam War veterans. We will even learn how to cook a Cambodian meal.
FIG students will collaborate in compiling a "student resource guide" based on our tours and meetings through scaffolded assignments done mostly in class that help create a community of belonging. The guide would give students a chance to synthesize what they are learning, work together, and provide advice to other students.
ASIA 111 Great Books on Modern Asia
Arts & Letters (>1)| >GP | TIME | BUILDING | CRN | 4 Credits
This course satisfies the Arts and Letters general-education group and International Cultures multicultural requirements. The course does not require prior knowledge of Asia, and can be counted toward the major or minor in Asian Studies. Both lower-division and upper-division students are welcome. Asia is the largest and most populous continent on earth. The continent is rich in history and culture, home to some of the world’s oldest civilizations and the birthplace of two major world religions. In the modern era, Asia has experienced not only traumatic wars and genocides but also rapid economic and political development. This course will introduce students to the cultural, social, economic, and political dimensions of life in modern Asia, along with comparisons of different regions of Asia. Through selections from four awesome and discussion-stimulating books, students will learn about the continent’s particular places, peoples, and aspects of their lives and cultures. This selective profile of Asia is aimed to convey not only the complex and diverse conditions of particular Asian countries but also the broadly shared regional patterns of development. The course is divided into four segments, with each segment using a single book, and each taught by a different faculty member from among the UO’s many world-class experts on Asia. Depending on the faculty who teach the class in a particular term, the books selected for the class and the countries discussed are different. Examples include memoir, manga (cartoon book), and scholarly studies. The readings introduce students to the victims of atomic bombs in Japan, North Koreans who survived famine, post-genocide Cambodian refugees in America, and Indians who live in a dynamic and complex society.
GLBL 101 Introduction to Global Issues
Social Science (>2)| >GP | TIME | BUILDING | CRN | 4 Credits
Hunger, intellectual property, global warming, arms trade, water rights, resource depletion, civil war, genocide, biodiversity loss, terrorism, education, global financial inequities, and immigration: These a just a few examples of the sometimes overwhelming list of challenges we face in a highly globalized world. Some are new but most have been with us for thousands of years. What have changed significantly and rapidly are our mobility and our access to information and images. Issues which a few decades ago may have seemed distant and disconnected are now thrust upon us or at least accessible through various media. Among the wide range of problems and issues faced by people throughout the world, who decides which issues get priority and attention? What informs your own sense of compassion and focus? Does our heightened sense of connection move us more quickly to resolution or to greater cynicism?The course is designed to meet the social science group-satisfying general education requirement. As the syllabus demonstrates, GLBL 101 covers a cross-section of issues, perspectives and scholarly modes of analysis by those working in the field of international studies. The course subject matter is broad, covering issues such as hunger, intellectual property, global warming, arms trade, water rights, resource depletion, civil war, genocide, biodiversity loss, terrorism, education, global financial inequities, and immigration. The course is grounded in the social sciences with readings and lecture material largely informed by the fields of human geography, sociology, political science, and social psychology. The course compels students to consider ways in which current international issues are framed by popular media, various stakeholders, and academicians (from the social sciences)