Message from HArCS Dean Owens

Dean Jessie Ann Owens.

To study the humanities is to study the self in all its expression. Our disciplines track the ways in which we express our lives, our cultures, our hopes, fears, anxieties, dreams, loves, and angers. We explore what matters most to each of us. No one today can speak across the table, or between cultures, without trying to understand the different ways in which human beings express selfhood.

Students of the humanities have a unique vantage point. We study the self as well as the very tools we use to express our selves. Our study of art history looks at paintings in all their contexts as well as at the techniques of painting. We learn the manner of composition as well as the lives of composers. We examine the world of human feeling through the practice and creativity of the arts. We read what others have written and study the process of writing. We talk to study language. We glance backward along the trail of history and track how we have behaved. We live by the ways we study culture, race and gender. Such is the gift of humanities to the world–we are the people we study.

In the name of our division - Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies - lies the beauty and breadth of our studies. Our graduates leave with the keys for cross-cultural conversation, an understanding of the ways we express feeling, and the ability to reflect critically on the problems and possibilities of our complex world.