Mar 28, 2024  
2008-2009 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
2008-2009 Undergraduate Catalog [Archived Catalog]

Humanities Program


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Coordinator: Professor Christina Root
Henry G. Fairbanks Visiting Humanities Scholar-in-Residence: Stephanie Sleeper

Interdisciplinary in approach, the Humanities Program is designed to acquaint the student with the principal issues and trends that have shaped the development of human cultural and intellectual development from antiquity to the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on the Western tradition. Drawing on such diverse subjects as history, literature, philosophy, political economy, and fine arts, each course focuses on an intensive study of primary sources in a given era.

Since the program is designed to assist the student to think and write clearly and critically, each course includes a writing component. The primary objectives of the Humanities Program are twofold: to provide the student with an appreciation for the evolutionary development of global cultural and intellectual traditions, and, more generally, to impart a sense of what Renaissance humanists referred to as the scientia rerum—the broad vision of how specialized or technical knowledge can be integrated into a liberalizing and humanistic whole.

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