Humanities Program

What is the Humanities Program?

How do we know, and what do we count as "knowledge"? What makes a "good" society? What are the most important elements of a "good" life? What is the place of human beings in the natural world?

Students in the Humanities Program — a required series of interdisciplinary courses for preps and lower mids — grapple with these questions through the study of literature, art, history, philosophy, and religion.

A long-standing academic tradition at Hotchkiss, the Humanities Program helps students sharpen their skills of critical thinking, research, and creative expression. These skills will do more than just equip students to pursue their own passions in upper-level electives in the arts, English, history, and philosophy and religion; they will enable students to think more creatively about the issues we face in our world today.

Students in the Hotchkiss Humanities Program play active roles in their learning. They examine a multitude of ways to ask and answer these fundamental questions — and they come up with questions and answers of their own.

Sample Courses in the Humanities Program