Engaging Ancient Worlds and Perspectives

The Global Humanities Reader is a collaboratively edited collection of primary sources with student-centered support features. It serves as the core curriculum of the University of North Carolina Asheville’s almost-sixty-year-old interdisciplinary Humanities Program. Its three volumes — Engaging Ancient Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 1), Engaging Premodern Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 2), and Engaging Modern Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 3) — offer accessible ways to explore facets of human subjectivity and interconnectedness across cultures, times, and places. In highlighting the struggles and resilient strategies for surviving and thriving from multiple perspectives and positionalities, and through diverse voices, these volumes course correct from humanities textbooks that remain Western-centric.

One of the main features of the The Global Humanities Reader is a sustained and nuanced focus on cultivating the ability to ask questions — to inquire — while enhancing culturally aware, reflective, and interdisciplinary engagements with the materials. The editorial team created a thoroughly interactive text with the following unique features that work together to actualize student success:
· Cross-cultural historical introductions to each volume
· Comprehensive and source-specific timelines highlighting periods, events, and people around the world
· An introduction for each source with bolded key terms and questions to facilitate active engagement
· Primed and Ready questions (PARs) — questions just before and after a reading that activate students’ own knowledge and skills
· Inquiry Corner — questions consisting of four types: Content, Comparative, Critical, and Connection
· Beyond the Classroom — explore how ideas discussed in sources can apply to broader social contexts, such as job, career, project teams or professional communities
· Glossary of Tags — topical ‘hubs’ that point to exciting new connections across multiple sources

These volumes reflect the central role of Humanities in deepening an empathic understanding of human experience and cultivating culturally appropriate and community-centered problem-solving skills that help us flourish as global and local citizens.