These combined courses provide students with the background from which broad frameworks of concept and theory are drawn and engage them in a collaborative learning environment. The courses are taught by instructional teams consisting of two professors, six to seven teaching assistants, and, for freshmen, nine upper-class honors students. Students may enroll in the first two Foundation Courses at the LAS General Curriculum office. The third Foundation Course is reserved for incoming freshmen, who may enroll in it through the Learning Communities program.
Students receive separate grades for each course.
Freshmen who enroll through the Learning Communities program will receive an additional one-hour credit for their weekly meeting. These twinned courses will study the history and literature of cultures in contact and in collision. As the world continues to shrink and economies become increasingly entangled in a global network, the world's people have been forced to find new ways to forge identities and communities. We will study some of these new cultural configurations, especially those emerging out of the crucible of colonialism and migration. These two forces have profoundly shaped the modern world.