Humanities

About the Program

The Humanities Program offers courses that draw upon the disciplines of history, literature, philosophy, religion, communication studies, art history, and music history to explore fundamental and enduring questions regarding the human condition. These courses are available to all students, regardless of major, and may be used to satisfy several of the university's Core requirements: the Seminars in Scholarly Inquiry; Fine Arts Approaches; Humanistic Approaches; and Connections.

The Residential Program

The Program also offers an opportunity for seventeen first-year students to live together, along with an R.A. and twenty upper class students in our brand new Humanities Residence Hall. Residents represent all majors, including the sciences and social sciences, but share in common their interests in the arts. Freshmen take Humanities 132 (The Scientific and Romantic Revolutions) in the fall semester, a course that satisfies the first half of the year-long freshman writing requirement (SSI1). In the spring semester, they enroll in Humanities 200 (Homer to Hitchcock: The History of Ideas in the Arts), which satisfies the Fine Arts Approaches core requirement. Students also participate in a variety of house-related activites (film screenings, open-mic nights, guest lectures, teas, etc.), course-related cocurricular evets, and off-campus field trips.

The Minor

The Humanities minor offers a course of study in the history of Western ideas as they have found expression through the literary, theatrical, musical, and visual arts. Courses in the minor are distinguished by being frequently team taught, by requiring an experiential and/or co-curricular component, by making use of digial resources in the humanities, and by affiliations with the Humanities Residential Program's activities and events.