Humanities (M.A.)

Program Overview

Professional Advancement, Personal Enrichment

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. For 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. Courses may be taken on either a degree-seeking or non-degree seeking basis. (Contact the Graduate School for more details about the non-degree option).

Committed Faculty

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. These scholars, researchers and artists bring a passion for teaching and a desire to share their expertise as they help students 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.

Customized Interdisciplinary Curriculum

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.