The Humanities Major

Joseph Boyett and Henry Conn, authors of Workplace 2000, recommend that future leaders pursue a "humanities degree" with some electives in business. They suggest a program which can: "provide our future leaders with a thorough awareness of the sweep of humanity--its history, culture, longings, beliefs, failures and foibles, hopes and dreams--from ancient to modern times. It is only by developing a great understanding for and appreciation of the human condition that anyone can hope to lead."

For over a century college students have been compelled to pursue narrow specializations as the key to advantageous career paths and financial success. Many now realize that this emphasis may have overshot its mark. Too frequently our college graduates are technically proficient, but lack the breadth of learning and commitment needed both for leadership in today’s complex and fast-changing world and for planning human survival through the century ahead.

Many adults are looking for a broader vision for their lives. They want satisfaction at a deeper level than TV culture can provide. They would like more meaningful involvement in their companies and communities. They are curious about spiritual paths and other more satisfying and sustainable ways of living. They want to know what is really going on in the world and how they can make a difference.

The humanities major at Antioch responds to these kinds of concerns and aspirations. Its core program, the World Classics Curriculum, gives students the opportunity to begin at the beginning, to study the history of the human species from its earliest recorded civilizations. Students return to the root questions that rose from both the experience of natural diversity and the mystery of the human purpose. They study seminal visions or myths of the world, forms of social organization, and creations in the arts, literature and technology of the diverse peoples of the world.

In studying these cultures, students come to better understand the intriguing continuities between ancient and modern life and the many predicaments and dilemmas humans share everywhere. They learn about the unique and ingenious ways of living and thinking developed in different times of history, in different parts of the world.

In the process, students gain greater insight into the origins of American civilization and learn how we are indebted to the previous civilizations of India, China, Africa, and the Americas as well as to Europe and the Middle East.

All six courses of the World Classics Curriculum (54 credits) are team taught by faculty of diverse disciplinary backgrounds. The program transcends the merely academic. In addition to intellectual development achieved by careful reading, notetaking, "mind mapping," analysis, and discussion, students develop skills in the lost arts of storytelling and conversation, in aesthetic judgment and in the exercise of imagination. The World Classics Curriculum invites students to read from the greatest literature and philosophy, enact some of the most powerful dramas and dance to the music of different folk heritages. The aim of the program is to draw from the breadth of the human experience the vision and the power to determine what it means to be whole, to be fully human.

Graduates of the program commonly cite enhanced openness, curiosity, flexibility, imagination, and self-confidence, as well as a great desire to travel abroad. They are able to view life from multiple perspectives, appreciate diverse forms of cultural expression and envision new and better ways of engaging the world.

Required for the humanities major, the World Classics Curriculum, as a whole or part, is encouraged for all majors in The Undergraduate Studies. Students completing all six quarters (54 credits) of the Classics receive a special Antioch certificate of accomplishment.

The three advanced courses in the humanities major extend the student’s preparation: humanities research methods; skill development in an area of humanities of personal interest to them; and philosophical perspectives on history and civilization. For their senior project, students make use of these cross-cultural, methodological, and theoretical approaches in a particular area of their choosing.

See Degree Requirements for the Humanities Major.