Below is a listing of the elective courses that need to be taken in Humanities. Please also see the main Gateway courses as well as the Current Courses for which classes are available to you.
HUM 2300 - PSC: What is Politics
What is Politics? How does it cultivate the human good? How do political actors coordinate complex activities to bring about justice? What difference would the common good make for policy decisions? What are the limits of what politics can achieve?
HUM 2500 - HIS:Imperialism & Humanities
What have been the meanings of empire for imperialist and imperialized? How can different humanities complement, enrich, and contradict each other? Theme pursued through literature, history, philosophy, theology, art, music and film.
HUM 2900 - Topics
Specific topics vary each semester.
HUM 3000 - ENG: The Catholic Imagination
Investigates life as drama; investigates themes of sin, grace, redemption, creation and incarnation, how these disclose the human person.
HUM 3001 - ENG: Lewis Tolkien & Inklings
Explores the fictional, theological, and philosophic writing of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings (Charles Williams, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, George MacDonald). Investigates the relationship between fantastic "otherwordly" fiction and human "wordly" experience.
HUM 3002 - Romantic Revolutions
Examines culture, religion, and politics in romantic period literature and beyond. Includes major romantic poets, important women writers, and later Victorian paths of "romantic religion." Asks fundamental questions about the role of art, transcendence, and human consciousness in social transformation.
HUM 3100 - PHI: Philosophy & Human Person
Investigates human nature; argues for a view of the person that does justice to the human experience. Philosophy--the contemplative wonder over meaning and the desire to know deeply--is an essential human experience.
HUM 3101 - PHI: Knowing What's Real
Through the reading of classic texts in philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and others), this course will explore the question whether and how it is possible to know reality, and what reality is after all.
HUM 3140 - PSC: Religion and Politics
The relation of religion and politics found in classical, modern, and contemporary literature especially in Christianity and Islam.
HUM 3150 - PHI: Beauty & Human Existence
Significance of beauty for human life. Is beauty "subjective"? Students consider contemporary thinkers on art, culture, and survey philosophies of art and beauty from ancient to modern.
HUM 3200 - PSC: Politics & Human Nature
Description: Our conception of human nature arises in part from our practice of politics and vice versa. What is the relationship between the way we think about the nature and meaning of human life and the practice of politics?
HUM 3260 - Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
Prerequisites: ETH 2050
A close and careful reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the most influential of his ethical work with attention to the nature of justice, virtues, friendship, and work.
HUM 3500 - PSC: Early Political Theories
The relevance of the classics of political thought for understanding modern politics from the Greeks to the to the modern era.
HUM 3800 - PSC: Democracy & Freedom
What is the relationship between democracy and freedom? What is the relationship between freedom and equality? Are there any difficulties with democratic conceptions of freedom? What does the future of democracy hold?
HUM 4000 - Jews,Christians,Muslims:Dialog
An overview of the context of radical pluralism within which contemporary discourse occurs. An examination of the challenges of this situation, an observation of Aquinas' interaction with other thinkers, and a proposal for this medieval model for inter-religious inquiry.
HUM 4200 - Forgiveness: Pers & Pol
This seminar mimes recent discussions that address these crucial questions: Does forgiveness abrogate justice? What is the place of anger and hate? May we forgive persons who will not repent? Is forgiveness a duty? Can forgiveness resolve political disputes and racial tensions?
HUM 4350 - PHI: Problem of Love
Reading a broad survey of philosophical discussions of love, from Plato to Derrida, we will address a variety of questions concerning the nature of love, the relationship between self-interest, self-love, and love of other, whether Christianity makes a difference to the meaning of love, and related issues.
HUM 4500 - J.R.R. Tolkien
The themes of Tolkien's literary works, including power and its effects, good and evil, the meaning and function of myth, the meaning of wisdom, mortality, choice and its effects on character, chance, and grace, and the redemptive power of sacrifice and love.
HUM 4600 - PHI: Question of Being
Is being the most fundamental question the human can raise? Metaphysics raises this question and has come under attack in postmodern philosophy. Students explore why the mystery of being is significant and reasons for postmodern suspicion about metaphysics.
HUM 4900 - Courtship and the Family
Human beings long for intimacy. How does one achieve it? Marriage is perhaps the most intimate relationship. How can we tell which person we ought to marry? How does one raise a family in the contemporary world?
HUM 5000 - History, Mystery, Destiny
Examination of history and its meaning over the ages. Authors: Thucydides, Plutarch, Augustine, Gibbon, Marx, Foucault, and others. Class discussions, short essays, final paper.
HUM 5100 - Vocation & Human Destiny
What difference would it make to think of human life as vocation? Would thinking of life as vocation impinge on or fulfill freedom? What would it mean to act on such a conception of life in the contemporary world?
HUM 5110 - HIS: Utopia
Oscar Wilde once said that any map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at. Students will study the maps of Utopia drawn up by a variety of writers from antiquity to the present. .
HUM 5150 - Literature & Politics
Exploration of the relationship between literature and politics through novels, poetry, theater, and journalism. Authors: Orwell, Conrad, Zola, Wilde, Silone, Baldwin, and others.
HUM 5500 - Will & Grace: Simone Weil
Love of neighbor, of God, of truth: What do these really demand of us? Simone Weil offers hard-hitting answers in terms of our political, cultural and social order as well as in our lives of thought, study and prayer.
HUM 5800 - THL: Religion & Literature
Prerequisites: THL 1050 or THL 1051
This course examines ways in which modern literature explores, develops, confirms and challenges concerns central to Christianity. Writing Enriched.
HUM 3000 - ENG: The Catholic Imagination
Investigates life as drama; investigates themes of sin, grace, redemption, creation and incarnation, how these disclose the human person.
HUM 5950 - Citizenship & Globalization
Philosophical and historical study of conception of citizenship and obligations of citizen to "city" or state. Topics to include patriotism, cosmopolitanism, the import of globalization, and what in particular it means to be American. To take place partly in London.
HUM 1903 - Internship
HUM 1906 - Internship
HUM 2993 - Internship
HUM 2996 - Internship
Humanities majors must satisfy all requirements set by the Internship Office. Students must submit a 10-15 page essay to the Humanities Chair copying the Internship Office. See department web page for particulars.
