Minor in Humanities

The Humanities minor is an interdisciplinary program dedicated to the study of arts and ideas in their cultural contexts. 

The Minor in Humanities (21 units) includes three core courses and four additional courses in one or more of the culture-study areas, depending upon the emphasis desired.

Three students sitting with their laptops

The core curriculum focuses on contextual study of texts belonging to all art forms, such as literature, music, visual forms and architecture. Students will be trained in close reading of texts, critical analysis, sound historical scholarship, conceptual thinking and the writing of academic prose, which History, Journalism, Liberal Studies, Philosophy, and Business majors in particular may find useful.

We recommend that students considering the Humanities minor take lower division General Education classes (such as HUM 130, 220, 225 and 250 concerned with ideas, social conditions, values and art forms) offered by the Department of Humanities and Comparative World Literature.

General Requirements for the Humanities Minor

Students minoring in Humanities must complete three core courses and four additional courses (in total 21 units) in one or more of the culture-study areas, depending upon the emphasis desired.

The three core courses are:

  • HUM 301: Form and Culture deals with the commonplace — and as you will learn, misleading — distinction between form and content in the arts.
  • HUM 303: History and Culture helps you to understand the commonplace — and as you will learn, oversimplified — distinction between historical fact and historical interpretation.
  • HUM 425: Thought and Image is about the relationship between ideas and their representation, or — as you will learn — the indistinguishability of ideas from their representation.

Students choose four additional upper division courses with a HUM prefix in consultation with a faculty advisor.