Humanities (HUM)

Build your cognitive and affective skills, environmental knowledge, resilience, and activism for sustainability/habitability: emotional intelligence, psychology of climate change; bio sensitivity; systemic and ecological thinking; the cognitive set of hope: agency and pathway thinking.

Offered All terms

An examination of the interrelationships among the humanities (literature, art, music, and philosophy) in Western and global culture from the early modern period to the contemporary period.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Bridges humanities and scientific representations of health and illness; multicultural perceptions of health practices and practitioners; value of humanities for SDGs and humanizing clinical practice; art for health. Addresses, self mutilation, race and medicine, cancer, music therapy, cloning, neurodiversity, planetary health.

Offered Fall, Summer

Mind/Brain and the Arts bridges the arts, humanities, and the sciences in examining human creativity, embodied reception of the arts, and creative representations of mental states, including mental health disorders, in relation to the science of the mind/brain.

Offered Spring, Summer

Deals with the devil exert an extraordinary grip on imagination, inspiring creativity and provocative social criticism. This cross-cultural approach to the magician Faust's devil bargain explores its deployment in critique of consumerism, racism, sexism, colonialism, nuclear weapons, and environmental issues.

Offered Spring, Summer

Nonhuman animals' relationships to the sacred, social criticism, consumption, commodification, climate change and other threats to biodiversity, and technology.

Offered Fall

The vampire concept from physiological, medical, ecological, psychological, psychiatric, cultural, and social perspectives. Topics include forensics pathology, psychosis, alternative identities, emotional vampirism, economic vampirism, and sustainability.

Offered Spring, Summer

"[N]ever lose infinite hope.": Martin Luther King, Jr.'s advice inspires this exploration of socially engaged works/practices (art, music, literature, theatre, media) from psychotherapeutic wellness perspectives applying critical race theory in addressing mental wellness of people of color in the US.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Intersections between humanities, technology, and science for representing, critiquing, and changing human relations with the environmental. Environmental sound art, broad bioethics, eco-music therapy, biopoetry, digital eco art, eco theatre, cyberprotest, and eco-writing addressing extinction, environmental injustice, climate change, e-waste, plastic oceans, sustainability.

Offered Fall

A multi- perspectival approach to electronic sports (eSports) Engage eSports representations in relation to health, including cognition, addiction, and neurodiversity; racism, violence, and sustainability; and nonhuman animals.

Offered Spring odd

We will examine the garden and pastoral impulse as it operated in out culture psyches. All the participants of the garden are fair game for interrogatio; lets try to forge some new tools for analyzing them.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

This course examines the effects of war on individuals and societies as well as its root causes within the human psyche and the cultural institution of patriarchy, as portrayed in literature, comics, theatre, the visual arts and music

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Myth is the underpinning of all civilization, reflecting humanity' search for meaning and answers to life's most important questions: what does it mean to be human? what is the meaning of life and death?

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

The American Musical as a social history, a reflection of the cultural, economic, and political developments of modern and contemporary eras, reflecting national identity. Analysis of the relevance of selected musicals to modern life, and thesis-based written and oral compositions.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Cultural and artistic production of the contemporary Middle Eastern through an interdisciplinary and historical perspective. The course will include discussion of links between the ways in which cultural production in the Middle East is affected by an in turn affects North America.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Prerequisite(s): The student must have either completed all coursework for the minor or be planning to complete it in the semester this course is taken. Health effects of spaces/places/sounds/radiation, including microgravity and other extreme environments, from transdisciplinary perspectives. Ecological musicology, therapeutic photography, social and spatial cognition skill-building, end-of-the-world psychology, planetary citizenship, atmosterrorism, habitability, space psychology, orbital debris, astrobiology, astrobotany, space-station health research.

Offered Fall, Spring

Prerequisite(s): Completion of at least twelve units in the Health Humanities minor. Prerequisites: completion of at least twelve units in the Health Humanities minor; consent of the program coordinator. Training relevant to Health Humanities.

Offered Fall, Spring

Prerequisites: Senior standing and/or approval of the student's major department is required; completion of a minimum of 27 upper division units in the major is recommended. Directed work experience in fields across the arts and humanities. Ideally, such work provides a practical bridge linking the student's academic studies with the world of work. A minimum of 8 hours per week of supervised work experience under the direction of a professionally-qualified mentor.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

An introduction to graduate level study in the humanities using the theme of the humanities in the city. Three hours of seminar per week.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Examination of contemporary issues addressing what we read, how we read, and why we read. Examples from literature and philosophy. Includes the refining of skills in research and writing. Three hours of seminar per week.

Offered Fall

Analysis of visual culture with emphasis upon modern and contemporary models approached through a range of theoretical approaches including those relevant to the cohort theme.

Offered Fall

Prerequisites: Courses in literary interpretation and history are recommended. Advanced work in a variety of topics in literature; assumes a working knowledge of the basic concepts and vocabulary of the discipline. Three hours of seminar per week.

Offered Fall

Prerequisites: Courses in music history, theory, and appreciation are recommended. Advanced work in a variety of topics including study of a period, a cluster of composers, a movement, or music of a single country. Three hours of seminar per week.

Offered Fall

Prerequisites: Previous courses in philosophy are recommended. Offers advanced work in a variety of topics such as the work of individual philosophers, or specific problems of epistemology or metaphysics. Assumes working knowledge of the basic vocabulary and concepts of the discipline. Three hours of seminar per week.

Offered Spring

Examination of art, artifacts, architecture, murals, masks and other objects that are carriers of social, cultural, and aesthetic values. Three hours of seminar per week.

Offered Spring

Advanced work in a variety of topics in film studies; assumes a working knowledge of the basic concepts and vocabulary of the discipline.

Offered Spring

Prerequisites: Previous courses in history are recommended. The study of a period or theme in history through the lens of the humanities. Assumes a working knowledge of the basic concepts and vocabulary of the discipline. Three hours of seminar per week.

Offered Spring

A systematic examination of the theory, practice, and aesthetics of formal and informal criticism applied to performances in music, theatre, dance, and art films.

Offered Spring

Prerequisites: Previous courses in the humanities are required. A special project involving research or creative work. Also extensive reading in consultation with a faculty member. Repeatable course.

Offered Fall, Spring

An intensive study of selected issues in the arts and humanities. Three hours of seminar per week.

Offered Fall

Comprehensive examination over coursework and set texts. The degree candidate taking the exam must have either completed all coursework or be planning to complete it in the semester the exam is taken. Preparatory session required.

Offered Fall, Spring

Prerequisites: Advancement to candidacy and consent of program coordinator. Thesis or creative project related to the student's particular combination of humanities studies. If creative project, extensive prior preparation required.

Offered Fall, Spring

Graduate students who have completed their course work but not their thesis, project, or comprehensive examination, or who have other requirements remaining for the completion of their degree, must maintain continuous attendance by enrolling in this course. Signature of graduate program coordinator required.

Offered Fall, Spring