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Students at the University of Oregon must complete one course in the US: DIA category (hereafter DIA), along with one course in the Global Perspectives category, in order to fulfill UO’s Cultural Literacy requirement for Core Education. The stated purpose of the DIA category requirement is to “develop students’ analytical and reflective capacities to help them understand and ethically engage with the ongoing (cultural, economic, political, social, etc.) power imbalances that have shaped and continue to shape the United States.” The DIA category requirement is thus meant to ensure that all students who graduate from the University of Oregon have completed at least one course that helps them understand power dynamics shaping inequalities in the United States and begin to learn skills of critical analysis, reflection, and ethical interaction for engaging these dynamics.
Curriculum Criteria
The DIA category requires DIA courses to meet the following criteria:
- Incorporation of “scholarship, cultural production, perspectives, and voices from members of communities historically marginalized by…legacies of inequality.”
- Engagement that addresses each of the following:
- Intersecting aspects of identity such as race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, indigeneity, national origin, religion, or ability.
- The uses of power to classify, rank, and marginalize on the basis of these aspects of identity, as well as considerations of agency on the part of marginalized groups.
- Historical structures, contemporary structures, forms of knowledge, cultural practices, or ideologies that perpetuate or change the distribution of power in society.
- Occasion to undertake one or more of the following:
- Teach respectful listening and tools for ethical dialogue in order to expand students’ abilities to practice civil conversation and engage with deeply felt or controversial issues.
Facilitate student reflection on their own multiple social identifications and on how those identifications are formed and located in relation to power.[1]
- The specific language of the DIA category is found in Section 2.2 of the UO Senate legislation that established the requirement: https://senate.uoregon.edu/senate-motions/us1718-18-repeal-multicultural-requirement-and-introduction-us-difference-inequality ↵
