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.

When Gertrude Stein quipped "There is no there, there" about the city of Oakland, she wasn't talking about urban blight, poverty or crime, she was talking about the fact that her family home and the city she remembered from her East Bay youth, had been torn down. This class will pursue an investigation into the cultural and historical make-up of Oakland as a study in social and political power dynamics. Issues of race, ethnicity and class collide with historical contingencies to produce artifacts that emerge through such details as neighborhood construction and planning, housing and architecture, transportation and labor and the life stories of residents who live within a milieu of contestation, survival, and ultimately, the joy of life. This class will be a journey through the cultural history of Oakland. Students will engage with a multitude of resources-from historical source materials to critical social theory-as we map what continues to be "there" in Oakland today.