I have completed a course of study at the University of Pittsburgh that has focused on the theme of cultural diplomacy, which means using global cultures and arts as tools to promote mutual understanding between groups of people. This theme has led me to enjoy and succeed in classes in various academic disciplines, ranging from musical performance, music theory, and art history, to comparative world region study, political and economic history, and the study of world religions.
This theme of cultural diplomacy has led me to pursue a broad array of different courses, and that in turn has helped me to understand the many facets and features of Western European and transatlantic cultures and arts. I have learned much about the history and societies of France and Italy in particular. I now see more clearly some of the differences between these high-context societies, which have been shaped by the long, shared history of a single ethnic group, a history that the group’s members are expected to know and that outsiders or foreigners find difficult to understand, and the lower-context society of the United States, a frontier culture founded by immigrants from different ethnic groups who did not share a single history, and as a result, needed to set clearer rules for ‘outsiders,’ ‘foreigners,’ and newcomers.