Writers of Cultural Pluralism

Ideas of plurality and especially multicultural visions of social integration have been considered to be paradigmatic ingredients of North American practices of national belonging. In the early twentieth century and especially in the contexts of the two world wars such nationalizing assessments of plurality enabled often antagonistic cultural, ethnic, racial, religious and gender groups to join hands on the commons of a so-called “constitutional faith.” In North America, two nations compete for the possession of this special recipe for political and social cohesion in the face of many incommensurabilities. Both nations have established complex versions of what Benjamin Barber has called a "history of commitment to common civil practices" (Barber 612). Canada, as much as the USA, claims to be a trailblazer for policies that enable social incorporation and peaceful coexistence. However, throughout their respective histories these countries with immigration histories older than the nation states themselves both have used coercive methods to restrict the power of undesirable groups within and to exclude the immigration of people that were marked by evolving definitions of wealth and education, class and ethnicity from without. In this course, we will read the major political speeches of American and Canadian governmental representatives alongside the defenses of cultural pluralism written by people such as Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, Randolph Bourne, Hannah Arendt, Chava Rosenfarb, Emily Pauline Johnson, Sara Jeannette Duncan, Frederick Philip Grove, and Gabrielle Roy.

This seminar by Barbara Buchenau integrates an international student conference in the month of July, co-directed with Dr. Courtney Blair Hodrick, a guest lecturer from Stanford University, and featuring input from a number of professors, who teach at Aurora universities. It is open to Aurora students and will discuss literature that addresses SDG 16 – the sustainable development goal of promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. The course curriculum will allow students to improve their competences in Inquiry & Analysis, Intercultural Knowledge, and Written and Oral Communication.