The interdisciplinary Master of Arts in Humanities program appeals to students with a variety of professional and personal backgrounds. From educators and working professionals to retirees and lifelong learners, the program’s students share a passion for the humanities and engage in exciting interdisciplinary exchange as they pursue their particular interests in the fields of history, literature, art, music, philosophy and/or religion.
Whether students seek to enhance their professional expertise or pursue a topic of personal interest, they find in the program exciting opportunities to realize their goals. To educators, the program offers advanced education in their particular content fields. Past and current students often share stories of how they apply course themes and readings in their own classrooms. To working professionals, retirees, and lifelong learners, the program offers an opportunity to explore a topic of interest that falls outside their past education or current employment. From accountants and scientists to police officers and administrative professionals, many students have found in the program a chance to pursue a long-held personal interest in one or more humanities fields. Students may begin their studies in the fall, spring, or summer terms, and courses may be taken on either a degree-seeking or nondegree-seeking basis. (Contact the Graduate School for more details about the nondegree option).
A strength of the Master of Arts in Humanities program remains the quality of the faculty. All courses are taught by instructors who hold terminal degrees in their fields and are experts in subjects ranging from Renaissance literature, women's history, and African-American studies to American and European history, Orientalism, classical and modern philosophy, indigenous peoples, and film studies. To the classroom these scholars, researchers, and artists bring a passion for teaching and a desire to share their expertise as they help students to pursue their unique interests and expand their understanding of the humanities. Aware of the needs of part-time graduate students, the faculty are committed to offering personalized instruction in small, evening classes.
The M.A. humanities program offers a 30-credit curriculum that allows students to enrich their expertise in a particular field through both interdisciplinary exchange and specialized study. In the program's foundational proseminars, students examine the central concepts and texts that shape work in and across the core humanities disciplines of literature, history, art and music, and philosophy and religion. From this foundation, students then enrich their knowledge of a specific topic or field through elective courses and a final research project.
Click here to learn about Hood College's upcoming 2021 Humanities Conference taking place on September 18, 2021! Submissions are due by June 1st, 2021.
Program Director
Assistant Director of Graduate Admission
"There's an element of logistics that made Hood College the right option for me, as it's the only in person Humanities program that's convenient to me. Even though there are endless online programs to select from, participating in an in-person program was critical to my choice to enroll at Hood College."
Hood’s 5th annual Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, an internationally recognized event in which graduate students use one slide and three minutes to present their chosen research topic, was held virtually for the first time this spring due to COVID-19.
Sophie Staires, a May 2020 graduate of Hood’s humanities program, won 1st place for her talk, "Justice in The Round House: Literature as a Tool for Social Justice." Sophie has been invited to continue on to compete in the 2020 Northeastern Association of Graduate School (NAGS)’s 3MT competition!
We spoke with Sophie to get some insight on why she chose to compete in Hood’s 3MT and how she feels about the opportunity to take her talk to the next level.
"The Humanities Program appeals to students with a wide array of backgrounds in business, education, science, etc. As a result, multiple perspectives were expressed during class discussions which I found interesting and exciting."
To apply to the M.A. Humanities program, please submit the following to the Graduate School:
Given the importance of writing in the humanities, the essay is an important component of the application and should demonstrate the applicant's formal writing skills.
All students must successfully complete the following proseminars, offered on a two-year cycle with one course offered each semester. Substitutions for these courses are not permitted and transfer credit will not be accepted as exemptions.
| FA 501 | Art and Music Proseminar: Aesthetics, Culture, and History | 3.0 |
| HIST 501 | History Proseminar | 3.0 |
| LIT 501 | Literary Studies Proseminar: Tragedy, Ideology, and the Tradition of Literary Criticism | 3.0 |
| PLRL 501 | Philosophy and Religion Proseminar | 3.0 |
| Total Credit Hours: | 12.0 |
Students must complete four or five 3-credit elective courses. Students completing the Thesis option will take four elective courses. Students completing the Portfolio option will complete five elective courses.
| HUM 550 | Directed Readings | 3.0 |
| HUM 560 | Humanities Colloquium | 3.0 |
| HUM 597 | Humanities Internship | 1.0 - 3.0 |
| HUM 599A | Graduate Writing for the Humanities | 3.0 |
| Discipline-Specific 500-level course | 3.0 | |
| One graduate level course in a non-Humanities field |
| |
| Total Credit Hours: | 12.0-15.0 |
In collaboration with their academic advisor(s), students will complete either a final portfolio project or a thesis. Substitutions for these courses are not permitted and transfer credit will not be accepted as exemptions. They will complete one of the following courses:
| HUM 594 | Humanities Portfolio | 3.0 |
| or |
| |
| HUM 580 | Humanities Thesis | 6.0 |
TOTAL CREDIT HOURS: 30.0
Corey Campion, director of the humanities program, and Tara Scibelli, a humanities student, discuss Hood's humanities offerings and why the humanities field is so important.
