Launched in 2002, Global Cultures is an innovative undergraduate major (and minor) in the School of Humanities with an exciting mission: to explore the problems and processes of globalization from a humanistic perspective. The major equips our students with twenty-first-century analytical skills and knowledge that is critical to understanding the complexities of the diverse world in which we live.
About Global Cultures
Whether you are interested in one major or a second major, we trust that you'll find Global Cultures to be a perfect fit, and a great investment for your future. As detailed in career opportunities our interdisciplinary major equips you with the knowledge and tools that lead to successful careers in a wide range of professions and fields. More than ever, students need to learn how to leap across disciplines because that is how breakthroughs now come about. It is interdisciplinary combinations—for instance, Art and Mathematics, Design and Technology—that produce innovations like Youtube and Facebook. Global Cultures prepares you to understand, evaluate and contribute to such groundbreaking innovations, and to thereby help shape emerging culture(s) across the globe.
Most of our students participate in UC’s stellar Education Abroad Program (EAP), either through EAP(Education Abroad Program) or IOP (International Opportunities Program), both housed in UCI's Center for International Education. Our web page EAP Planning for Global Cultures is designed to help you fit an exciting education abroad experience into your undergraduate curriculum.
A growing number of our students double-major (currently over 50% of Global Cultures majors have a second major). This trend reflects a more complicated world that needs broad thinkers to solve society's problems. Double majors tend to become the most competitive and successful candidates for top graduate schools and/or careers in which understanding the complexities of our culturally diverse world is of special importance.
The Difference between Global Cultures and International Studies at UCI
Students interested in pursuing Global Cultures often ask how our program differs from International Studies, an outstanding B. A. program in the School of Social Sciences. The two programs are similar, in part because many of the upper-division courses offered by either program can count to satisfy requirements in the respective two majors.
But there are also significant differences. As one of our advanced students recently put it, we like to think of our Program as “International Studies with less politics and more people”. This explains why our mission is best described as an attempt to explore globalization from a humanistic perspective.