Cultural and Regional Studies
Enabling student to think critically across disciplines
This competence area takes an innovative approach to the College's liberal arts and environmental mission. Students have the opportunity to understand varied cultural responses to the human condition and its environmental surroundings.
The curriculum design enables students to think critically across a number of disciplines, including anthropology, communication, economics, history, politics, and sociology. Students pursue a combination of local and field-based courses, explore the interwoven forces of globalism and localism in a variety of cultural settings.
The rich variety of extracurricular activities at Prescott College complements and enhances this competence – for example, the Amnesty International Club, the Aztlan Center for Environmental Justice, the Student Environmental Network, and the Gender and Sexuality Alliance. Many courses offer active, participatory learning experiences among students, teachers of other courses, mentors and others, and through travel courses in the United States and abroad.
Cultural and Regional Studies Areas of Knowledge:
Political Economy
Political Economy studies the relationships among political institutions and values, economic institutions and practices, and the natural environment that supports them all. The study of political economy raises questions and hopes for change on a global scale. Through the methods of ecological economics and political ecology, students acquire a deeper understanding of the concept of "development."
Gender Studies
Gender Studies investigates questions of power organized around differences of gender. This area focuses on gender representations in the mass media, on the mapping of gender hierarchy onto the nature/culture distinction and on the social construction of gender roles in private and public life.
Border Studies
Border Studies, a flourishing field of study, analyzes the layering and clashing of cultural practices and images. The College's location in the Southwest provide a unique opportunity to consider "borders" as fundamental to analysis of the contemporary world. This decisive idea pushes study into the fresh and often uncharted conceptual territory of exile, migrations, diasporas, ecotourism, post- colonialism, multiculturalism, subcultures, and xenophobia.
Regional Studies
Regional Studies focuses on the authenticity of bioregional and cultural location. Regionalism offers a critical perspective providing new resources for identity and energies for reimagining the nature of the nation/state. Regional Studies has its roots in the particularities of place: history, language, cultural expressions, and physical environment. Study opportunities arise within the United States and abroad.
Religion and Philosophy
The Religion and Philosophy competence corresponds with the College's liberal arts mission. Students experience and endeavor to comprehend the universal human process of understanding themselves and their world, exploring a wide variety of religious experiences, thought, institutions, texts, and ethics.
Courses aim to enrich and encourage students' efforts to relate to the sacred or spiritual aspects of their world. Philosophy introduces the great issues that have intrigued people through time, offering students opportunities to develop their own personal philosophies. Students learn to think critically about and evaluate key issues and communicate their ideas orally and in writing. The religion and philosophy area seeks to integrate the human experience on both the intellectual and spiritual levels.
Most of the classes have field components, including visits to museums and community religious institutions and participation in lectures and conferences. Local resources include the Hindu religious community in Skull Valley, various area Christian churches, Prescott's Jewish synagogue, the local Baha'i group, the Thai Buddhist temple in Phoenix, and the Tibetan Buddhist Garchen Institute in Chino Valley. Students meet and interact with meditation teachers, religious practitioners, and philosophers who demonstrate various forms of thought and practice.
