About the Minor
Director, 2004-2008: Karen Pechilis, National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professor
Director, 2008-2012: Jim Hala, National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professor
The Humanities Program is an innovative interdisciplinary program. Its courses offer the opportunity to roam historically and to explore across fields and cultures with issues relevant to the present. The core of the program is a set of Western humanities courses taught by a team of faculty from among the humanities disciplines, such as art history, classics, English, European languages history, literature, music, philosophy and religion departments. Each course is taught by two professors who put their fields together on a thematic basis. These courses are complemented by comparative humanities courses that explore the contributions to world and Western culture of civilizations around the globe, including Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Representing the College's commitment to interdisciplinarity, the Humanities Program serves to increase historical consciousness, aesthetic and intellectual activity. All humanities courses count in the general education requirements and may also count towards certain majors and minors.
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Requirements for the Minor (22 credits)
I. Three courses from the Western humanities offerings, preferably taken in sequence (12 credits)
HUM 11/Classical Antiquity (4)
HUM 12/The European Middle Ages (4)
HUM 13/Forms of Humanism: Renaissance to Enlightenment (4)
HUM 14/The Modern Age in the West: Self and Society in the West, 1848 to the Present (4)
II. Two courses from the comparative humanities offerings (8 credits)
HUM 16/Islam and the West (4)
HUM 17/Africa, America, African-American (4)
HUM 18/Asia Comes to America (4)
HUM 19/Latin America, Europe, the U.S.: An Odyssey of Cultures (4)
III. One half-semester humanities issues course, HUM 20/Current Issues in the Humanities (2 credits).
Note: In consultation with the humanities director, students may substitute one 4-credit intermediate- or upper-level course in a specific humanities discipline - literature, religion, classics, history, art, philosophy, music, interdisciplinary programs, social science disciplines and programs, etc.- for one of the Western or comparative humanities courses.
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