The Compass Courses offer you an opportunity to explore the division of Arts and Humanities. They are offered on different themes each year, but they share a unique structure. The class is taught by three professors in three modules of study. You will have a chance to study with each professor, experience a range of approaches to the theme, and learn the methods and structures of different disciplines. Compass Courses are designed to guide you through various options for study in Arts and Humanities and to serve as a gateway to the rich offerings at Berkeley. They are part of the freshman experience, advancing a common journey of discovery and building an intellectual cohort among students new to Berkeley's expansive possibilities.

As the largest and the most populous geographical and cultural entity, Asia has played a dominant role in the world’s politics, economy, and culture. But what is Asia? This course approaches this question from three perspectives: the construction of Asia as a cultural space by Europeans from Greek antiquity to modern times; Asia’s own exploration of its identity as a cultural and political sphere; and the imagining of Asia by Americans in the age of Asia’s global economic rise. Linking these perspectives is an investigation of Asianness itself, through which we will explore urgent cultural and political issues in today’s world: race and identity, migration and belonging, cosmopolitanism and geopolitics, and responses to environmental crisis. We will explore these themes, and many others, through a wide variety of materials, including the first extant Greek tragedy The Persians, East Asian film, literature, and other art forms, and contemporary Asian-American writings and activist documentary, We will engage thinkers, writers, and artists ranging from Hegel and Max Weber in Europe to the novelist Tanizaki Jun’ichirô in Japan, the filmmaker Jia Zhangke in China, and the imaginative writers Amitava Kumar, Mia Alvar and Cathy Park Hong in the U.S. Keywords: Asianness, Race, Global Cultural Politics, World Literature and Philosophy, Popular Culture All students will be eligible for the Compass Scholars Prize: the three best student papers will receive a $500 department award at the end of the semester (May).

More discussion seats available here https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2022-spring-hum-10-004-lec-004 and here https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2022-spring-hum-10-005-lec-005.

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