Community
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| Humanities students debate and engage in lively conversations |
Few things are more powerful than sitting in a group of people from around the United States and even the world to discuss words and ideas that have come to us from across centuries and millennia. These conversations can take place in classrooms and dorm rooms, over dinner or coffee, among students in the humanities or with people from other parts of the university.
Study in the humanities provides food for thought and opportunities for meaningful engagement with others.
OPPORTUNITY
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| Brandeis students study with leading scholars like professor Ramie Targoff |
A degree in the liberal arts is eminently practical. The liberal arts are universal, directly concerned with understanding and engaging those matters that are of deepest concern to all: justice, historical truth, language, beauty, love, honor and the good life — all the intangibles which, in the aggregate, make us human.
Hence the other name of this endeavor: the humanities. The humanities are practical because they concern themselves with the practice of life, inculcating those skills in critical reasoning, practical judgment, clear writing and resourceful thinking that open up a wide array of opportunities.
A glance at the Alumni Snapshots page will suggest the range of opportunities that a degree in the humanities from Brandeis calls into view.
JUSTICE
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| Dr Martin Luther King Jr with Brandeis students during his first campus visit in 1957. |
From Sophocles's "Antigone" to Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" or Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," the study of works ancient or contemporary, in Spanish, Hebrew or English, the humanities confront questions of justice and injustice, ethics and right action.
In ways large and small, the humanities touch on what makes us unique and forms the basis for civil discourse and civic action.