Widely used in the Renaissance, the term humanities (humanitas or studia humanitatis) refers to the study of human intellectual and artistic creativity. Humanities is both a general academic category (inclusive of literature, history, philosophy, and the history and criticism of art and music) and a discipline in its own right with a methodology for the critical study of intellectual history and aesthetics. The interdisciplinary humanistic fields that the department comprises—humanities, classics, and comparative literature—offer students unusual latitude in pursuing graduate education in the humanities, disciplined by insistence on substantial foreign language skills, competence in critical theory and practice, and the development of scholarly discipline.
The Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature offers an MA in Comparative Studies. This program admits ten to twelve students per year. The MA in Comparative Studies is designed as a two-year program, and most full-time students are able to complete the MA within two years, usually defending the thesis during spring or summer term of the second year.
