Beta Notice: For the best experience, please use Google Chrome.
UThynkBetter thinking. Better decisions.
Thinking Paths · Beta

Civilizations & Culture

Different perspectives on belonging, change, and shared memory.

Reading Paths

Inside and outside stories

Ten readings comparing historical accounts, identity, cultural memory, and measures of progress.

10 readings

What you will practice: Compare historical voices while distinguishing testimony, interpretation, and missing perspectives.

  • The Histories · Herodotus
  • The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano · Olaudah Equiano
  • Nationalism · Rabindranath Tagore
  • American Indian Stories · Zitkala-Sa
  • The Histories · Herodotus
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass · Frederick Douglass
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass · Frederick Douglass
  • The Souls of Black Folk · W. E. B. Du Bois
  • The History of Mary Prince · Mary Prince
  • The Souls of Black Folk · W. E. B. Du Bois
Open Reading Path
Reading Paths

Who preserves the story?

Compare memory, objects, songs, testimony, and omissions as ways communities preserve experience.

10 readings

What you will practice: Evaluate what a historical source preserves, what it leaves out, and whose knowledge helps interpret it.

  • Indian Boyhood · Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa)
  • American Indian Stories · Zitkala-Sa
  • The Souls of Black Folk · W. E. B. Du Bois
  • The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano · Olaudah Equiano
  • How We Think · John Dewey
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass · Frederick Douglass
  • The Histories · Herodotus
  • The Narrative of Sojourner Truth · Sojourner Truth, narrated to Olive Gilbert
  • Nationalism · Rabindranath Tagore
  • Indian Boyhood · Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa)
Open Reading Path
Reading Paths

Learning across difference

Move from local expertise to cultural judgments, education, recognition, and belonging.

10 readings

What you will practice: Compare perspectives without treating one narrator as the voice of an entire people or familiarity as proof.

  • Indian Boyhood · Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa)
  • The Histories · Herodotus
  • Essays · Michel de Montaigne
  • Nationalism · Rabindranath Tagore
  • The Souls of Black Folk · W. E. B. Du Bois
  • American Indian Stories · Zitkala-Sa
  • A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Mary Wollstonecraft
  • Up from Slavery · Booker T. Washington
  • Twenty Years at Hull-House · Jane Addams
  • The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano · Olaudah Equiano
Open Reading Path
← Thinking Paths