Core Seminars

Every Humanities major must complete two core seminars - an Interpretations seminar that engages deeply with one particular work or author and a Modernities seminar that probes the question: what is modernity? Both core courses include substantial attention to methodological concerns that are fundamental to the humanities disciplines, and to distinctively humanistic activities like persuasion and interpretation.

Interpretations Courses

Interpretations seminars provide an experience that survey courses lack – sustained, deep engagement with one particular work or author, and the interpretive universe that grows around it. Courses focus on one or several books or works of art, music or film, their historical context, on the interpretive questions they raise, on histories of their reception and transformation. 

The goal is to give students the experience of coming to know works very deeply, to grapple with the many ways of understanding a work and with the multiplicity of meanings that can arise from interpretation.

Modernities Courses

Modernities seminars will seek to introduce students to the question: What is modernity? Nietzsche might say it begins with Socrates, while Weber might say it begins with rationalization. Is it is one phenomenon or many? When does modernity begin? Students should be exposed to an array of different ways of posing and understanding the question.

The course is a broad survey meant to build on the sort of material covered in foundational courses, with more thematic coherence, historical context, and theoretical self-consciousness.