First-Year Offerings

The Humanities Program is proud to sponsor several exceptional courses of study exclusively for first years. Apart from Directed Studies, an intensive introduction to the Western tradition of arts and letters, and Six Pretty Good Ideas, a less conventional introduction to the humanities at Yale, we also offer a range of more specialized first year seminars.

All first year courses require preregistration. This year preregistration opens August 9 and closes August 15.

Directed Studies

The Directed Studies program consists of three integrated full-year courses in Western Philosophy, Literature, and Historical and Political Thought. Each of the three courses meets weekly for one lecture and two discussion seminars, where small groups of students work closely with a professor to texts in depth. Regular classes are complemented by a series of colloquia, in addition to sessions at the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Interested students must apply or petition for interest before the beginning of the Fall Semester of freshman year.

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Six Pretty Good Ideas

Six Pretty Good Ideas (6PGX) is a suite of courses that introduces first-year students to the study of humanities at Yale. Each course examines cultural objects from various times and places around the globe. By viewing these highly significant objects as “pretty good,” we promote a spirit of play as we encourage students to ask: who has valued these objects? What makes them good? Why do they matter?

Participants in the program will also join a vibrant intellectual and social community. All students will meet together for a weekly Friday lab, where their writing will receive personalized attention. They will be introduced to the expansive archives, libraries, and special collections of Yale—including the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Yale Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art, and specialist world-class holdings such as the Babylonian collection, and they will also participate in a variety of social events.

6PGX offers an excellent foundation for studying any subject at Yale and a path into several humanities majors. Seminar and lab, 1.5 credits (HU, WR). Fall semester only.

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  • This course is anchored around six transcultural models of the hero that similarly transcend boundaries of time and place: the warrior, the sage, the political leader, the proponent of justice, the poet/singer, and the unsung. 

    Fall 2022
    TTh 9am-10:15am, F 1:00pm-4:00pm

  • This course focuses on the humanities through an intensive study of transatlantic biographers. We examine six roles biographers can play: the archivalist, the contemporary, the fictionalizer, the listener, the miniaturist, and the systematizer.

    Fall 2022
    TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm, F 1:00pm-4:00pm

  • This course provides first-year students with an intensive introduction to studying the humanities at Yale. The course focuses on six trans-historical objects (or modes) of visionary experience: God(s), Paradise, Cosmos, Self, Text, and Future.

    Fall 2022
    TTh 1pm-2:15pm, F 1:00pm-4:00pm

  • Through the prism of thinking about the self, anchored around six trans-historical models of selfhood, this course provides first-year students with an intensive introduction to studying the humanities at Yale, ranging widely across genres, media, periods, and geographies. 

    Fall 2021
    MW 9am-10:15am, F 1:00pm-4:00pm

Fall First Year Seminars

  • In this course, we address the role of uncertainty in medicine, and the role that narrative plays in capturing that uncertainty. We focus our efforts on major authors and texts that define the modern medical humanities. 

    Fall 2022
    TTh 1pm-2:15pm

  • This course explores the role, structure, and value of the Sublime as an essential mode of human experience through a variety of theoretical writings, poetic expressions, and artistic outputs, in order to think through not only what the Sublime is but also why we need it.

    Fall 2022
    TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

  • Why does literary innovation happen? This course addresses such questions by taking an interdisciplinary approach to looking closely at several innovative novels from the early twentieth century to the present.

    Fall 2022
    MW 9am-10:15am

  • This course engages with three different traditions of imagining the good life: Confucianism, Christianity, and Modernism. Students will be asked to challenge the fundamental question of the good life and to put that question at the heart of their college education.

    Fall 2022
    MW 9am-10:15am

  • Close examination of Aristotle’s observations on storytelling to identify the universal principles that all good stories share, and investigate how these principles connect us all despite cultural, ethnic, and geographical differences.

    Fall 2022
    TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

  • An introductory course on the art of watercolor as a humanistic discipline. Readings, discussions, and studio work emphasize critical, creative thinking through “learning by doing” study.

    Fall 2022
    W 2:30pm-5:30pm

  • This course considers the concept of “treasure” by visiting nearly all of Yale’s galleries, museums, and library special collections. We explore questions around how these objects and materials were created and how they came to be at Yale.

    Fall 2022
    W 1:00-4:00