Program

In the humanities, we access a massive repository of ideas concerning the human experience.

Some of the ideas will get expressed using words, others by using musical sounds, or dancers on a stage, or paint on a canvas, or celluloid flickers on a screen, or by objects in a space. The course is collaborative and team-taught, with plenary lectures by both the humanities faculty teaching the course and by other scholars and artists from Davidson and beyond. Some visiting scholars and artists will also take part in discussions and workshops.

The humanities program will allow students to understand and appreciate a wide array of humanistic texts, including music, novels, paintings, poetry, films, theater, sculptures, buildings, and digital media, observe patterns and create compelling connections between seemingly disparate texts, speak and write with precision and persuasion, take part in our pre-orientation program, Sapere Aude, and rely on the mentorship of the Humanities Fellows.

HUM 103-104 introduces the new course theme, the body. We build the course around eight three-week units, each with a key artifact at the center. The course incorporates the long legacy of the humanities programs at Davidson in its attention to critical reading and writing about ideas that matter, but liberates itself from the inherited imperatives of coverage and chronology in the Western tradition.