Degree Requirements

CASE Culture Studies

The purpose of the Culture Studies curriculum is to introduce students to cultural systems, to allow students to define what is commonly meant by the term "culture," and to examine critically specific examples of culture. The curriculum also provides students with the opportunity to explore the relationship between cultural artifacts and the community that produced them and/or draw comparisons between different cultures. This exposure can lead students to understand the facts, possibilities, and limitations of their own cultural conditioning.

In order to count toward CASE Culture Studies, a course must be:

  1. Listed with the appropriate Culture Studies designation (CASE DUS or CASE GCC) for the semester during which the course was taken (for a list of designated courses, please use the CASE Course Designations tool); and 
  2. Taken on the IU Bloomington campus or through an IU-administered or IU co-sponsored Overseas Study program.

Please note that the College's CASE Culture Studies requirement is different from the campus-wide General Education curriculum's World Languages and Cultures requirement.

Diversity in the United States (CASE DUS)

CASE DUS courses consider the challenges and opportunities that diversity presents in pluralistic, liberal-democratic societies such as the United States. Students who complete the CASE DUS requirement will be able to demonstrate:

  • An ability to identify and evaluate the ways in which diversity—whether racial, ethnic, gendered, religious, cultural, economic, or other dimensions of difference—complicates and enriches life in a liberal-democratic society
  • The capacity to describe, distinguish, and analyze a range of values, attitudes and methods of organizing cultural and social experiences so as to understand the possibilities and limitations of their own world view
  • An understanding of how cultural practices and artifacts represent the communities that produced them and how they serve to create, refine, and blend cultures
  • Facility in using a vocabulary of topics, tropes, narratives and other discursive strategies to identify and productively engage the problems and possibilities that diversity poses for the United States in the contemporary world.
Global Civilizations and Cultures (CASE GCC)

CASE GCC courses examine the distinctive worldview, institutions, and patterns of organization of a non-U.S. civilization or culture. A course might focus on the art, religion, literature, political and philosophical traditions, social behavior and institutions, etc. of a particular culture or civilization, but it would fulfill the CASE GCC requirement only if it devoted a substantial amount of time to the relationship(s) between that specific aspect and the culture more generally. Alternately, a course might have a broad conceptual focus within a narrow geographical and temporal setting (e.g., religious practices in a particular country or across a specific time frame) or a narrow conceptual focus across a broad geographical or temporal setting (e.g., "global cities" on different continents or as manifest across broad expanses of time). Students who complete the CASE GCC requirement will be able to demonstrate:

  • Knowledge of non-U.S. cultures and civilizations (including beliefs, values, perspectives, practices, and products)
  • An ability to explain the relational complexities of cultural forms and ideologies, institutional arrangements, social and political institutions, etc., whether studying a single culture and/or civilization or taking a comparative approach that examines cultures and civilizations across time and space
  • Facility in using a vocabulary of topics, tropes, narratives and other discursive strategies to analyze, interpret, and productively engage different cultures and civilizations on a global scale.

CASE GCC Alternative: Students who successfully complete a semester (or more) abroad in a program sponsored by the Indiana University Office of Overseas Study will satisfy the "Global Civilizations and Cultures" component of the CASE Culture Studies requirement.