All students at CCA are required to complete Cultural History as a part of their Humanities & Sciences requirement. A menu of courses will be offered each year and students may choose from these courses to fulfill the Cultural History requirement. The courses offered to complete the requirement will be historical in nature, will have a substantial non-Western component, and will introduce students to an historical awareness of cultural diversity. Objectives include an introduction to historical and critical thinking, to research methods and uses of evidence and primary sources, and to provide historical context for contemporary citizenship.

This course explores the cultural construction of individual and collective identity through mortuary art from Britain (and western Europe), China, and North America. We will focus on burial structures, monuments, and other public commemorative objects. What gets memorialized - lives or deaths, individuals or social stations, victories or traumas? What kinds of relationships do memorials make or confirm or contest, and who are the players in these relationships? What do such relationships have to do with individual and collective identity? Finally, how can you take these historical lessons and turn them to creative ends as artists, architects, and designers?