Core courses
In their second year, Arts and Humanities majors enroll in core courses that provide the foundation for the Arts and Humanities concentrations. They also take electives from core courses offered in other majors.
From prehistoric times, human populations have moved across the globe. Driven by environmental, economic, political, and social forces, they have carried with them and have been exposed to new customs, new technologies, and new ideas for structuring societies and interacting with other peoples. They have also brought war, disease, and reduced cultural and biological diversity. Through theoretical and empirical readings about cross-cultural, transnational, and global encounters, this course provides you with the analytical tools to examine the large sweep of such events and movements in the period since 1400 from a variety of perspectives, to understand their causes, their impacts, the counter-currents they engendered, and what we can learn from them. Throughout we pay attention not only to what happened in the past, but to how historians have interpreted these developments.
What’s ethically significant about being human, or about our identities as members of various social groups? What do we owe to animals, to ecosystems, to future generations, to AI, and how do our answers to these questions rely on theories of identity? How do social and political institutions and structures limit and enable who we are? How might we reimagine the boundaries of humanity to challenge oppressive and unjust power dynamics? In this course we will examine the origins and enduring justifications for core ethical beliefs, as well as challenges to the idea that there are universal ethical norms by exploring the emergence of different conceptions of humanity and human values from a wide range of globally diverse perspectives. While the course introduces students to many historically significant philosophical voices, most of our classes focus on applying philosophy to concrete contemporary ethical challenges, particularly in the areas of environmental ethics, data ethics, bioethics, and feminist ethics. Note: This course provides the foundations for, and is a prerequisite for, the Philosophy, Ethics and the Law concentration in the Arts & Humanities major. AH111 also counts toward the Minor in Sustainability because it addresses a broad range of environmental ethical topics, including food ethics, climate ethics, and environmental justice.
A fundamental characteristic of the arts is that they are transformative. They lead us to see ourselves in new ways, to re-conceptualize our world, and to rethink our relationship to it. Consequently, the arts are often harbingers and pacesetters for social change. This course explores the use of creative expression in the visual arts, literature, and music to question and sometimes resist authority, to reassess ideological constructs, and to advocate change in social and political systems as well as in the arts themselves. Under what circumstances are such efforts likely to be successful? How do we determine success? To address these issues, the course draws examples from literature, the visual and performing arts, and music from different parts of the world. This course is a foundation and a prerequisite for the Dynamics of the Arts and Literature concentration in the Arts & Humanities major.
Design affects the objects, spaces, and ideas of everyday life, from door handles and physical spaces to laws and the virtual spaces in which we experience our lives. Building on a broadly conceived and interdisciplinary understanding of “design,” this course covers approaches to design that are useful for all types of design practice. We explore how people and their technologies and material worlds have co-evolved over time. We also consider ethical questions related to design and practice transferring principles from one design field to other design fields. We conclude by covering recent developments in design studies that will directly equip you to recognize the contingency of different design logics and the intricacies of design trends that emerge in the future. You’ll leave this course with a deeper and more nuanced knowledge of your technological and material worlds, a robust foundation to further practice various types of design, and a nuanced set of tools to participate in the building and crafting of your communities as a designer and/or citizen. Note: This course qualifies as part of the Interdisciplinary Minor in Sustainability because it addresses sustainable design. Students learn how social, technological, and ecological systems interact in design processes and products and how to use the tools of design for more just and sustainable outcomes.
Concentrations Courses
In their third year, Arts and Humanities majors select a concentration, begin taking courses within it and begin work on their capstone courses. They also take electives chosen from other Minerva courses (other concentration courses in Arts and Humanities, core and concentration courses in other colleges).
In the fourth year, Arts and Humanities majors enroll in additional electives chosen from Minerva’s course offerings within or outside the major. Additionally, they take senior tutorials in the major, and finish their capstone courses.
History as a field of study is based on a set of methods to analyze the past, understand the foundations of the present, and at times anticipate the future. Historical analysis focuses on why changes did or did not occur in particular societies at various times, how these changes unfolded, the motivations of participants, and the influence that the past may have on the present. This course examines the creative responses of historians to the challenges they face in uncovering the past and addressing these issues. Students deal with questions such as what are the boundaries between historical and fictional narratives? How does who writes history affect what they write? If history is written by those in power, as is often stated, what tools does the historian have to write about the people without a history? What possibilities and limitations are inherent in different kinds of historical evidence, whether material objects, written texts, or digitized data sets?
Historical narratives often rely on implicit comparisons between time periods and societies. In this course, students make these comparisons explicit in order to illuminate differences and similarities in the ways societies have responded to political, economic, social, and environmental challenges. Students combine the fundamentals of historical inquiry with methods and perspectives from sociology and anthropology to examine controversial debates about the relative success and failure of different societies and the responses of different societies to similar challenges from the seventeenth century to the present; they also analyze case studies on topics including empire, nationalism, responses to environmental and political crises, and social movements. Along the way, they consider what is gained and what is lost by approaching historical phenomena from a comparative perspective.
"The past is never dead. It's not even past," wrote William Faulkner. The presentness of the past is evident in the controversies that ensue when history is used and misused for public purposes. This course analyzes some of the critical public debates that have occurred over historical issues and over governmental policies enacted in different parts of the world in response to museum exhibits, memorials, the publication of history textbooks, and the making of historical films. It also examines the call for political actions based on a fictitious past as well as the role of historians in opposing such efforts. Students consider questions such as: what constitutes public history and what theoretical issues does it raise? What is the difference between public memory and history? What are the standards and responsibilities of the field? What obligations does the historian have to the living and the dead, and what preparation do historians need in order to be effective in this increasingly important segment of the historical profession?