What are the humanities?

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The humanities can be described as the study of the myriad ways in which people, from every period of history and from every corner of the globe, process and document the human experience. Since humans have been able, we have used philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language to understand and record our world. These modes of expression have become some of the subjects that traditionally fall under the humanities umbrella. Knowledge of these records of human experience gives us the opportunity to feel a sense of connection to those who have come before us, as well as to our contemporaries.

Within the contemporary American university, the humanities are comprised of a group of academic departments that deal with these questions. At Stanford, all incoming freshman are exposed to the humanities through the required Introduction to the Humanities Program.

At Stanford, the humanities include:

Academic Departments

There are eleven humanities departments at Stanford. They are all within the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Art & Art History

The Art & Art History Department offers courses of study in the history of art, the practice of studio art, and film and media studies. The undergraduate program is designed to help students think critically about the visual arts and visual culture. The courses focus on the meaning of images and media, and their historical development, roles in society, and relationships to disciplines other such as literature, music, and philosophy.

Find out more at the Art & Art History web site

Classics

An intensive dedication to the study of the ancient Mediterranean world — its languages, history, and cultures — defines Stanford Classics. Disciplines from philosophy and literary criticism to art and architecture, music and history, linguistics, politics, and rhetoric arose in ancient Greece and were developed at Rome.

The sciences trace their origins largely to Greek precedents in physics, mechanics, mathematics and biology. The very idea of a university and organized research into the human condition are rooted in Greco-Roman culture. Every student who enters Stanford deserves — and needs — to have a grounding in Classics.

Find out more at the Classics web site

Drama

The drama department's mission is two-fold. It is both an academic department and a theater production department. Every degree requires students to work in the theater, often side by side with the faculty, to create successful productions. Stanford Drama produces a full season of theater during the Stanford academic year. Thus, the working theater becomes a laboratory for the students as well as their training ground.

In addition, the Dance Division's goal is to develop a cultivated mind, a trained body and passionate engagement through movement experience. Dance offers a range of classes that examine the historical, sociological, and cultural implications of dance, as well as classes focusing on a wide variety of techniques and styles. The instructors, in addition to being published academicians, are also working artists in their own fields, and Stanford Drama is proud to produce both theater professionals and world-class theorists and educators.

Find out more at the Drama web site

East Asian Languages and Cultures

The Department of Asian Languages at Stanford is dedicated to the languages, literatures, linguistics and cultures of East Asia. The Department prepares students for B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Chinese and Japanese, and has a thriving program in Korean language. It also offers an undergraduate and a Ph.D. minor in Chinese or Japanese language and literature. The B.A. in Asian languages is a degree for the "new humanist" who wants her or his education to be broad enough to understand a non-Western language and culture. Many students have found that the language skills acquired can be advantageous to their professional careers and have combined studies in Asian Languages with offerings in other Stanford departments such as Anthropology, Art, Economics, Education, History, Law, Linguistics, Philosophy, Political Science, Religious Studies and Sociology.

Find out more on the East Asian Languages and Cultures web site

English

We live in a world saturated with the written word. The English Department studies the culture of the word in its most sophisticated form, literature, with a focus on literary traditions in English across a range of media.

Our courses emphasize interpretive thinking and creative writing, examining the dynamics of literary and cultural history, the structures of literary form and genre, and the practice of reading, writing, and critical analysis.

The undergraduate English major provides an excellent background for many professional fields, including law, education, writing, publishing, medicine, and technology.

The graduate program features rigorous training in the research and analysis of British, American and Anglophone literary histories and texts, preparing students to produce scholarship of originality and importance, and to teach literature at the highest levels.

Find out more at the English web site

History

History courses teach the foundational knowledge and skills (analytical, interpretive, writing) necessary for understanding the deep connections between past and present. History is a pragmatic discipline in which the analysis of change over time involves sifting the multiple influences and perspectives that affect the course of events, as well as evaluating critically the different forms of evidence historians exploit to make sense of them. Teaching students how to weigh these sources and convert the findings into a persuasive analysis lies at the heart of the department's teaching. Graduates with a History major pursue careers and graduate study in law, public service, business, writing, and education.

Find out more at the History web site

Linguistics

The Department of Linguistics is a vibrant center of research and teaching, where the range of languages studied is diverse and the scope of active research and teaching is broad.  As a field of study, linguistics explores and attempts to explain our ability to use language. Language is our most fundamentally human capacity, yet represents the most intricate set of behavior patterns that humans exhibit.

Language has both cognitive and social facets, and so the Linguistics major cuts across the humanities and social sciences. Any background the student brings to the major is likely to enrich the study of language, and knowledge acquired about linguistics is likely to rub off on most any other discipline.

Find out more at the Linguistics web site

Music

The Department of Music was formally founded in 1947, but music has been an important facet of the University from its inception, when founder Jane Stanford encouraged sacred concerts in Memorial Church. The undergraduate major in Music is built around a series of courses in theory, musicianship, analysis, and music history, as well as performance (both individual and ensemble) and piano proficiency requirements. The program is rooted in the Western, classical tradition; however, courses in modern composition and theory and jazz theory and history are available as well.  The Department of Music presents approximately 150 concerts and recitals each year, providing performance opportunities for students throughout the University.

Find out more at the Music web site

Philosophy

The Philosophy department examines the efforts of past thinkers to understand the world and people’s experience of it. The fundamental problems that philosophers address, help to guide and enhance our understanding of other subjects by placing emphasis on methods of reasoning and the way in which judgments are formed. Since philosophical ideas have had an important influence on human endeavors of all kinds – including artistic, political, and economic – students of the humanities should find their understanding of these topics deepened through an acquaintance with philosophy. A philosophic background also provides analytical skills and a breadth of perspective helpful to those called upon to make decisions about their own conduct and the welfare of others.

Find out more at the Philosophy web site

Religious Studies

The Department of Religious Studies offers a variety of disciplinary perspectives on religion and on the history, literature, thought, and practice of particular religious traditions. The department is home to a dozen regular faculty, with strengths especially in the study of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam.  Religious Studies works closely with several related programs at Stanford: the Department of Philosophy, with which we share staff and offer a joint undergraduate major; the Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies; the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies; the Program in Medieval studies; Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, with which we offer joint graduate degrees; and the Asian Religions & Cultures Initiative

Find out more at the Religious Studies web site

Division of Literatures, Cultures & Languages

The DLCL is one of the largest units at Stanford, with its six independent departments and the Language Center, all of which are committed in one way or another to a systematic study of the history of literatures and cultures as well as mastering their defining medium — language.  Our diverse disciplinary and multi-disciplinary commitments situate us at the center of the scholarly community and make us one of the leading international centers for research and instruction in the study of literature and culture.  The forms of verbal art and cultural expression we study and teach come from cultures other than our own and from languages other than English: hence, our unique mission at Stanford. These expressive forms involve all spheres of cultural life and human endeavor, and imagine, re-imagine, or re-enact their worlds from different, often unusual perspectives.

Find out more at the Division of Literatures, Cultures & Languages web site

Comparative Literature

The Department of Comparative Literature differs from most other national literature departments. While it seeks to prepare its students for reading and research in the languages and histories of different societies and periods, it is also dedicated to their critical and cultural analysis. Literary theory in all its forms helps to break down the borders between national literary fields, as well as between literary studies and other disciplines. Indeed, the discipline of Comparative Literature asks, often, just what "literature" is, and how it functions as a product of (and response to) our imaginations, our languages, and our social and economic lives. Students in our courses, majors in the department, and graduate students in the Ph.D. program all interact to shape debates about the place of the verbal arts (and the methods of their study) in past times and our own.

Find out more at the Comparative Literature web site

French and Italian

The French and Italian Department at Stanford has a unique profile among American departments of Romance languages and literatures. While providing an intensive training in French and/or Italian literary history, theory, and criticism, the Department has long been a leader in connecting the literary to broader issues in philosophy, anthropology, history of science, and cultural history. This commitment to interdisciplinary work can be seen in the profiles of our faculty, whose training and teaching encompass psychology, anthropology, art history, continental philosophy, and analytic philosophy along with their literary expertise. It can also be seen in the variety of programs run by or in conjunction with the Department.  This long tradition of interrogating the relationship between literature and other cultural domains gives French and Italian at Stanford a particularly sharp perspective on the importance of literary studies today.

Find out more at the French and Italian web site

German Studies

The Department of German Studies offers a variety of programs in German language and linguistics, literature, culture, and thought. The department’s goal is to provide students with the linguistic and analytic facility to explore the significance of the cultural traditions and political histories of the German-speaking countries of Central Europe. At the same time, the interdisciplinary study of German culture, which can include art, history, literature, media theory, philosophy, and political science, encourages students to evaluate broader and contradictory legacies of modernity, such as how the literary, artistic, and cultural responses to the belated and rapid modernization of Germany allow for reflection on the modern condition in general. An education in German Studies not only encourages the student to consider the effects of German-speaking thinkers and artists on the modern world, but also provides a lens through which the contours of the present and past can be evaluated.

Find out more at the Art & Art History web site

Slavic Languages and Literatures

The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures offers a coordinated study of Russian language and literature, literary and cultural history, and literary theory. Improving cultural understanding is a critical part of the department's mission, and we offer a range of courses at all levels, devoted to Russian literature, music and visual arts that do not require specialized knowledge. Russian is still the lingua franca over the vast territory of the former Soviet Union, and a good command of this language offers a gateway to Eurasia’s diverse cultures, ethnicities, and religions, including Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. Stanford students are in a privileged position in relation to Russian and, more broadly, East European and Eurasian Studies, because of our tremendous faculty and library resources. Our students master a difficult language and a rich and challenging literature, and are rewarded by gaining entry into a unique, powerful, and diverse civilization that defined major trends in the past century and continues to play an increasingly significant role in the world today.

Find out more at the Slavic Languages and Literatures web site

Iberian and Latin American Cultures

The Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures offers courses focused on the languages, literatures, and cultures of the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, and Latina/o populations in the United States. The Department balances an emphasis on literary studies with a more diverse, humanistic set of approaches to cultural and social issues. Our faculty is made up of world-renowned scholars in fields as diverse as contemporary Catalan literature, twentieth-century Spanish poetry, nineteenth-century Spanish fiction, contemporary Latin American literature, Aljamiado and medieval Iberian literature, bilingualism, and Chicana/o culture and literature. The Department is committed to provide students with a contextualized knowledge of the literatures and cultures of the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages to the present, of the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries of Latin America, and of the Spanish-speaking communities of the United States.

Find out more on the Iberian and Latin American Cultures web site