Through the study of literature, film, history, philosophy, popular culture, and visual art, students delve into how meaning is made and learn various forms of analysis to gain a greater understanding of social interaction and human creativity. Over the course of the year, lectures by nine prominent faculty present a variety of cultural artifacts and modes of understanding human experience. In small seminars, students engage closely with this complex material while developing visual, oral, electronic, and written communication skills that will serve them in every academic discipline and in public life.

By addressing a wide range of topics and approaches to humanistic inquiry, Humanities Core meets seven General Education requirements in the categories of Lower-Division Writing, Arts and Humanities, Multicultural Studies, and International/Global issues.

Welcome

In the 2022-2025 cycle, Humanities Core explores the theme of Worldbuilding under the course direction of Professor Jonathan Alexander. Why Worldbuilding? Across the humanities, worldbuilding has emerged as a powerful way to understand how a variety of cultural objects are made, disseminated, received, and remixed for further circulation. Worldbuilding gestures toward the active and participatory ways in which a range of people engage with political and aesthetic production, not only to make sense of their worlds, but to reshape and refashion them in ways that are more hospitable, more equitable, and more sustainable. Approaching humanistic endeavor and inquiry through this question highlights how people use a variety of modes—including historical and speculative narrative, poetry, drama, visual art, philosophy, and multimediated forms of interaction—to critically question their worlds and build new models of living for the future. Never before have we needed such creative energy—the energy of reimagining our worlds—than now.