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Essay on Humanity

500 words essay on humanity.

When we say humanity, we can look at it from a lot of different perspectives. One of the most common ways of understanding is that it is a value of kindness and compassion towards other beings. If you look back at history, you will find many acts of cruelty by humans but at the same time, there are also numerous acts of humanity. An essay on humanity will take us through its meaning and importance.

Importance of Humanity

As humans are progressing as a human race into the future, the true essence of humanity is being corrupted slowly. It is essential to remember that the acts of humanity must not have any kind of personal gain behind them like fame, money or power.

The world we live in today is divided by borders but the reach we can have is limitless. We are lucky enough to have the freedom to travel anywhere and experience anything we wish for. A lot of nations fight constantly to acquire land which results in the loss of many innocent lives.

Similarly, other humanitarian crisis like the ones in Yemen, Syria, Myanmar and more costs the lives of more than millions of people. The situation is not resolving anytime soon, thus we need humanity for this.

Most importantly, humanity does not just limit to humans but also caring for the environment and every living being. We must all come together to show true humanity and help out other humans, animals and our environment to heal and prosper.

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The Great Humanitarians

There are many great humanitarians who live among us and also in history. To name a few, we had Mother Teresa , Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Princess Diana and more. These are just a few of the names which almost everyone knows.

Mother Teresa was a woman who devoted her entire life to serving the poor and needy from a nation. Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian poet who truly believed in humanity and considered it his true religion.

Similarly, Nelson Mandela was a great humanitarian who worked all his life for those in needs. He never discriminated against any person on the basis of colour, sex, creed or anything.

Further, Mahatma Gandhi serves as a great example of devoting his life to free his country and serve his fellow countrymen. He died serving the country and working for the betterment of his nation. Thus, we must all take inspiration from such great people.

The acts and ways of these great humanitarians serve as a great example for us now to do better in our life. We must all indulge in acts of giving back and coming to help those in need. All in all, humanity arises from selfless acts of compassion.

Conclusion of the Essay on Humanity

As technology and capitalism are evolving at a faster rate in this era, we must all spread humanity wherever possible. When we start practising humanity, we can tackle many big problems like global warming, pollution , extinction of animals and more.

FAQ of Essay on Humanity

Question 1: What is the importance of humanity?

Answer 1: Humanity refers to caring for and helping others whenever and wherever possible. It means helping others at times when they need that help the most. It is important as it helps us forget our selfish interests at times when others need our help.

Question 2: How do we show humanity?

Answer 2: All of us are capable of showing humanity. It can be through acknowledging that human beings are equal, regardless of gender, sex, skin colour or anything. We must all model genuine empathy and show gratitude to each other and express respect and humility.

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Humanities Writing Resources

• Talk to your TA or professor in their weekly office hours. Schedules are posted on Canvas.
• Refer to the Humanities Program Writing Handbook
• Humanities Peer Tutoring : Meet one-on-one with another Revelle student who has successfully gone through the Humanities sequence and talk through your ideas.  

• Make a synchronous appointment with a tutor or attend walk-in tutoring.
• The Writing Hub also offers asynchronous appointments. Just upload your essay and a specific question and your consultant will upload a 5-10 minute screencast within two hours of the end of your appointment for you to review on your own time. You will have access to the screencast file for 7 days.

• understand and properly respond to your essay prompts.
• write thesis statements, topic sentences, and conclusions.
• organize essay ideas for logical flow and argumentative strength.
• provide feedback on drafts in the areas of writing flow, grammaticality, vocabulary choice, and academic style.
• The Language Arts Tutorial Services (LATS) program at OASIS offers online and in-person appointments as well as reading workshops for Humanities students. 
• LATS emphasizes multilingualism, diversity, and lived experiences by offering a community space for students from different backgrounds to improve their reading and writing skills with group sessions and tutoring. 

• Peer Tutoring
• English Language Writing Tutor

• Park University
• Writing in Your Discipline

Writing for Humanities

Writing in Your Discipline: Writing for Humanities

• URL: https://library.park.edu/disciplinewriting
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• Writing for Education
• Writing for Nursing
• Writing for Science
• Writing for Social Sciences
• Writing for Social Work
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Writing in Philosophy   values logical reasoning — in other words, Philosophy is interested in  how  you argue. Writing in Philosophy can include   several types of writing tasks, like original arguments, argument reconstruction, objections and replies, and/or thought experiments. As the UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Center’s Philosophy writing guide points out, each type of writing has a different goal to achieve and so needs a different approach from the writer.

For example, an objection to an argument must give reasons for why the argument or its reasoning is flawed: maybe the premises don’t really support the claims, or the argument doesn’t use its terms consistently, or the conclusion relies on unspoken assumptions; etc. When building arguments in Philosophy, writers need to be careful to avoid logical fallacies, which create flaws in an argument and weaken its reasoning. 

Remember, also, that writing in Philosophy often uses specialized terminology with meanings that are specific to Philosophy itself. When defining these terms in an argument — like ‘vague,’ ‘logical,’ or ‘truth’ — writers should  not  use a standard dictionary. For philosophical terms, look up Philosophy reference materials or even Pryor’s “Philosophical Glossary for Beginners” for a head-start.

Writing in Philosophy should be clear and straightforward so that a reader does not misinterpret the argument. So, writers should use plain prose and a clear structure. To help your reader follow your argument, try to ‘signal’ to them what you’re doing (for example, “As I have just explained” or “Smith’s next premise that…”).

Writing in Music can involve several types of assignments, and   UNC-Chapel Hill’s Writing Center’s Music writing guide talks about approaches for argumentative papers, concert reports, historical analyses, song analyses, and performance or media comparisons. They also give tips for describing music, using music terminology (and terms to avoid), and making arguments about music.

Writers in Music should be careful to avoid common pitfalls, like projecting emotional content, mixing or misusing terminology, or using the wrong tense.   When writing technical descriptions of music, explain why the details you’ve described are important — try to avoid giving a “‘blow-by-blow’ analysis.”   Duke University’s Writing Studio’s Music writing guide explains more “actions” for writing in Music, including tips like providing the relevant sections of the score in your examples, supporting your evaluations with evidence from the music, and always explaining your examples.

The ultimate goal in writing in the humanities is to explain or understand the human experience and human values. The humanities—also called the liberal arts—include philosophy, religion, art, music, literature, history, and language. These fields are a broad way of studying and understanding how people express ideas, information, and feelings—the experience of what makes us human. Sometimes mislabeled as the “opposite” of the applied sciences or professional programs such as business, the humanities are in fact at the core of every human endeavor to pursue, discover, and pass on knowledge.

A good literature paper has a debatable argument (or thesis) that is well supported. This argument is your own original idea, based on a thorough understanding of the text and supported with careful reasoning. So, what makes a good literature paper? 

An argument:  when you write an extended literary essay, often one requiring research, you are essentially making an argument. You are arguing that your perspective-an interpretation, an evaluative judgment, or a critical evaluation-is a valid one.

A Debatable Thesis Statement:  like any argument paper you have ever written for a first-year composition course, you must have a specific, detailed thesis statement that reveals your perspective, and, like any good argument, your perspective must be one which is debatable.

• You would not   want to make an argument of this sort:

Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play about a young man who seeks revenge.

That doesn't say anything-it's basically just a summary and is hardly debatable.

• A better thesis would be this:

Hamlet experiences internal conflict because he is in love with his mother.

That is debatable, controversial even. The rest of a paper with this argument as its thesis will be an attempt to show, using specific examples from the text and evidence from scholars, (1) how Hamlet is in love with his mother, (2) why he's in love with her, and (3) what implications there are for reading the play in this manner.

• You also want to avoid a thesis statement like this:

Spirituality means different things to different people. King Lear, The Book of Romans, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance each view the spirit differently.

Again, that says nothing that's not already self-evident. Why bother writing a paper about that? You're not writing an essay to list works that have nothing in common other than a general topic like "spirituality." You want to find certain works or authors that, while they may have several differences, do have some specific, unifying point. That point is your thesis.

Lear, Romans, and Zen each view the soul as the center of human personality.

Then you prove it, using examples from the texts that show that the soul is the center of personality.

Research papers are perhaps the most common form of writing you should expect in a history course.   As the name suggests, these assignments require you to participate in historical research. After reading through primary and secondary sources, you will need to interpret them in a way that can answer some question about the past.

When writing a historical research paper, your goal is to choose a topic and write a paper that:

      1) Asks a good historical question—your inquiry should capture the complexities of history, examining how certain factors contributed to an event or how an event could be examined or understood in a new light, apart from what previous historians have suggested.

      2) Tells how your ideas connect to previous work by other historians, and

      3) Offers a well-organized and persuasive thesis of your own.

Art History

Evaluating and writing about visual material uses many of the same analytical skills that you have learned from other fields, such as history or literature. In art history, however, you will be asked to gather your evidence from close observations of objects or images. Beyond painting, photography, and sculpture, you may be asked to write about posters, illustrations, coins, and other materials.

Some helpful tips when writing for theology classes:

1. Know what kind of paper you are writing.

• If it is a spirituality/reflection paper, you can use first person.
• If it is a biblical studies/analysis paper, use third person only.

2. Be extremely clear. Theological writing is very academic. If it helps, state what you will be doing or the purpose of your paper directly in the thesis/introduction.

• In this paper, I will _______.

3. Read sources carefully

• Be able to understand what the author is saying and summarize it in your own words.
• Read footnotes.
• Make use of sources frequently in your paper.
• When including a quote, make sure you explain it and incorporate it into the sentence.

4. Useful sources

• Commentaries: analyses on scripture
• Good for: exegesis, passage analysis, biblical studies
• Examples: Anchor Bible Commentary
• Practical sources: applying theology to the public sphere
• Good for: ethics, philosophy, history, spirituality
• Examples: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, Catholic Church catechisms

Philosophy Links

• Arguments in Philosophy
• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Center’s Philosophy writing guide
• Harvard College's Philosophy writing guide

Theatre Links

• UNC-Chapel Hill’s Writing Center’s drama guide
• University of Wisconsin’s Writing Center’s play review guide
• University of Richmond’s Guidelines for Writing Critiques for Theatre Performances

Literature Links

• William H. Hannon Library Literature Guide

Music Links

• UNC-Chapel Hill’s Writing Center’s Music writing guide
• Richmond University’s Writing Center’s Music writing guide
• Duke University’s Writing Studio’s Music writing guide

Writing about theatre or drama includes writing about plays, productions, and performances. UNC-Chapel Hill’s Writing Center’s drama guide explains that “writing about drama often means explaining what makes the plays we watch or read so exciting.” They provide a handout for writing about drama, including mini-guides to what elements to consider and analyze when writing specifically about a play, a performance, or a production. 

For a brief overview of some general principles for writing about theatre, refer to the University of Richmond’s Guidelines for Writing Critiques for Theatre Performances. 

Typically, you should format and organize a theatre paper in the same way you would format a paper for your humanities classes, including English 101 and 102. Here are some general guidelines:

• Begin with an introduction paragraph that includes your thesis. A good thesis for a theater paper will be an argument or central claim about some aspect of the play, production, or performance (such as the ones discussed above) that is specific, bold, and, most importantly, supportable by the evidence you will present in the body paragraphs of the paper.
• Evidence includes both primary sources (the play or production itself as well as analysis based on your own interpretation) and secondary sources such as scholarly publications you may consult. 
• End with a conclusion paragraph that reiterates the main points of the paper and gestures beyond its scope to the larger significance of what you have accomplished.
• Citations should be in MLA format (unless otherwise indicated by your instructor)
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16.8 Spotlight on … Humanities

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe various disciplines in the humanities.
• Evaluate employment opportunities for graduates with humanities degrees.

Although all college instructors value good writing, each area of study has its own set of criteria by which writing is judged. For instance, the loose informal style and speculative content of a reflective essay might be appropriate for an English class but inappropriate for an anthropology class in which the instructor would expect the more formal structures established in that subject area.

As a discipline, the humanities include subjects that focus on human culture and values. Some subjects are literature, languages, classics, art history, film, musicology, philosophy, religion, and often history, which sometimes is placed in the social sciences. The humanities are the foundation of liberal arts and, as such, include a wide variety of writing genres. Research reports, biographies, literary analyses, ethnographies, quantitative reports, proposals, books, journal articles, poetry, film scripts, novels, stories, technical writing, and professional documents are forms of writing particular to the humanities.

As a rule, knowledge in the humanities focuses on texts and on individual ideas, speculations, insights, and imaginative connections. Interpretation in the humanities is thus relatively subjective. Accordingly, much of the writing and research in the humanities is characterized by personal involvement, lively language, and speculative or open-ended conclusions.

The field of English includes the study of not only literature but of literary theory and history, and not only composition but creative and technical writing. In addition, English departments often include linguistics, journalism, folklore, women’s studies, cultural or ethnic studies, and film. In other words, within even one discipline, you might be asked to write several distinct types of papers: personal experience essays for a composition course, analyses for a literature course, abstracts or case studies for a linguistics course, procedural texts for a technical writing course, and short stories for a creative writing course. Consequently, any observations about the different kinds of knowledge and the differing conventions for writing about them are only generalizations. The more carefully you study any one discipline, the more complex it becomes, and the harder it is to make a generalization that does not have numerous explanations.

Careers in the Humanities

Because humanities subjects emphasize critical thinking and clear writing, the skills humanities students obtain are valued in many fields other than the most obvious ones. Humanities majors have gone on to careers in law, medicine (humanities plus pre-med), advertising, journalism, TV and film writing and production, public relations, graphic design, teaching, technical and medical/scientific writing, human resources, and many others. For more information about career opportunities for humanities students, see these sites:

• Humanities and Social Sciences Careers
• Top 10 Highest Paying Jobs for Liberal Arts Majors
• 25 Great Jobs for Humanities Majors

Students’ Stories

Despite strong interest in the humanities—especially in reading, writing, and language—some students avoid humanities subjects as majors because they think they won’t find jobs after graduation. Such fear, however, is unwarranted, as many organizations actively seek students who major in languages or in other humanities disciplines. These graduates are valued for their ability to interpret and analyze text and to write clear, concise, and compelling prose. Moreover, employers realize that students who concentrate on studying people—whether real or fictional—develop insights into human behavior and understanding of how to deal with it. For example, these students who graduated with degrees in humanities subjects have found rewarding work in humanities-related and business fields.

Gabriela Torres majored in film studies, with a minor in theater. Although more interested in the technical aspects of both, she took creative writing classes and enjoyed performing in several college productions. Soon after graduation, Gabriela joined the human resources (HR) department of midsized corporation. Her job is to train new hires and conduct in-service workshops for current employees. Recently her role has expanded to writing, producing, and acting in training videos in which she uses the skills she learned in college—and more.

Derrek Wilson became an international studies major after he received a summer stipend to study in Europe. After only a few weeks there and trips to historic sites, Derrek says he got “hooked on history.” The broad focus of his interdisciplinary major allowed him to take courses in humanities subjects: history, geography, religion, archaeology, and world literature. He had studied Spanish in high school and continued in college. Derrek graduated last year and now works as an international program coordinator for his university. Responsible for logistics of foreign students coming to the United States and for American students going abroad, he oversees housing accommodations, student visas, and travel arrangements. He loves his job and the time he gets to spend in different countries, but he plans to go to law school in a few years—with, you guessed it, a specialty in international and immigration law.

Despite his parents’ warnings that he’d never find a good job, Nick Marelli majored in English. He put his literary interests to work in college as managing editor of the literary magazine and arts editor of the newspaper. When he graduated, he applied, on a whim (and to please his parents), for a management trainee position at a large insurance company. Thinking he would get nowhere without business courses, he was surprised when a recruiter called him for an interview. The interviewer then told him that the company actively seeks English majors because they know how to read carefully, digest and summarize information, think critically, and write clearly, concisely, and correctly. Nick says, “I was surprised when I heard someone other than an English teacher say that. I really like my work, where I’m learning a lot on the spot rather than in a classroom.”

Thinking, Writing, and Publishing

Critical writing requires critical thinking. When an individual or collaborative team articulates their perspective, they provide new knowledge for audiences. In essence, all texts have potential to create new knowledge. A writer of any type of text has the potential to enter a conversation and show audiences new ways to look at a subject.

Learning how to write analytically and critically offers a skill set for crafting various genres, such as information reports, proposals, cost/benefit analyses, instructions, and so on. After you have completed your analysis for this chapter, consider submitting it to an open-access academic journal that highlights the work of undergraduate students in the humanities, such as these:

Undergraduate Journal of Humanistic Studies

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Humanities essays

What are the humanities.

The humanities refer to subjects that study people, their ideas, history, and literature. To put that another way, the humanities are those branches of learning regarding primarily as having a cultural character.

For example, one of the UK’s academic funding bodies, the Arts & Humanities Research Board or AHRB, tends to concentrate on the following sorts of subjects: Classics, Visual Arts and Media, Modern Languages, Music and Performing Arts, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Medieval and Modern History.

Key features – primary & secondary texts

In the majority of these subjects you begin with a primary text – e.g. a play or a film or a set of historical events. You are expected to show good knowledge of the primary text and to mount a discussion of it – or of aspects of it – that is located within current critical debate about it. You are expected to use your own judgement about other people’s judgements of the primary text.

Key features – logical argument

Readers of your essay will look for an argument that is clearly expressed in a logical order. They will not expect your essay to follow a specific set structure. For example, an English Literature essay might start with a plot summary of the work being discussed, a quote from the work or a quote from critical writing on the work. The important thing is to use your starting point to say clearly what you are going to write about and why; and to make the rest of your discussion flow naturally from it

Key features – balanced discussion

This is probably the one feature that distinguishes humanities essays from other sorts of writing. This does not mean that scientific papers or social science essays aren’t balanced discussions: it means that a humanities essay is more likely to have review various opinions and interpretations.

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Your Guide to Writing a Humanity Essay

Humanity is showing compassion and kindness to others. Writing a humanity essay involves analyzing various aspects of humanity in detail. This article gives you a guide on how to write a humanity essay.

Humanity essay examines the traits, beliefs, relationships, and experiences of people. It focuses on what it is to be human, as well as the struggles, victories, and bonds we make. The human experience is vast and complex, and writing a humanity essay paper allows you to explore this whether your assignment is to write on historical events, personal experiences, philosophical ideas, or societal issues.

How to write a humanity essay

Below is how you write a humanity essay:

• Choose a topic

Humanity is a broad subject thus you should narrow it down to one of its subtopics. For instance, on a topic like war, you can narrow down to the causes and effects of a war. You should choose a topic that you are interested in and compose a good essay about it.

• Write an essay outline

After choosing the topic, you should conduct in-depth research and write the information from the research in an essay outline. You should properly structure your essay outline where you note down the key points of every section of the essay. This includes the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. Once you start writing your humanity essay, you should use the essay outline as the point of reference.

• Write the introduction

You should begin the introduction with a hook to grab the reader’s attention. This could be an interesting fact about your topic or a rhetorical question. Give background information on the topic and state its relevance. Write a strong thesis statement describing the essay’s main idea. For a better understanding of how to write the introduction, you should research various humanities essay introduction examples.

• Write the body

The body describes the essay’s theme in depth. You should write well-structured paragraphs with a topic sentence that introduces the paragraph’s key point. Then write middle sentences giving fact-based information or examples of the paragraph’s key point. You should also give your interpretation. Complete the paragraphs with a concluding sentence.

Each paragraph should have a unique key point and if two paragraphs are about the same point use proper transition words such as ‘in addition’, ‘however’, or ‘moreover’. When writing the paragraphs, you should explore the essay’s theme giving your analysis and backing it with factual information or statistics. Always cite all the sources you researched your essay from using the instructed writing format.

• Write the conclusion

The conclusion is a summary of the humanity essay thus you should not bring new information to it. You should summarize the essay’s key point. Rephrase the thesis statement and state its significance. Complete the conclusion with a closing statement or a call to action.

Using the steps above, you will be able to compose a good humanity essay. You can structure your humanity essay into a 5-paragraph essay . Research various humanities essay examples to properly comprehend the humanities essay structure.

What kind of essays do humanities use

Below are the various kinds of essays that humanities use:

• Analytical essays

Analytical essays dissect a complicated subject into its constituent parts and examine the connections, importance, and ramifications of each. Critical thinking and making connections between various aspects are prerequisites for these writings.

• Expository Essays

Expository essays give in-depth explanations of a concept on a topic. These essays offer a thorough and impartial investigation of the topic, frequently with the use of illustrations, proof, and understandable explanations.

• Comparative essays

A comparative essay entails comparing and analyzing two or more concepts, books, artworks, and historical events. These essays draw attention to the similarities and differences between the concepts being compared as well as a thorough comprehension of each.

• Literary Analysis Essays

Literary analysis essays analyze and interpret literary works, including plays, novels, and poetry. The topics, characters, symbolism, storytelling devices, and historical background of the work are all explored in depth in these studies.

• Argumentative essay

Argumentative essays provide a coherent argument and back it up with facts, logic, and refutations. These essays require the writer to take a stance on a certain subject and defend their argument throughout the essay.

Importance of humanities in our lives

Below is the importance of studying humanities and the importance of humanities in our lives:

• Promoting cultural understanding and empathy

People can immerse themselves in many cultures and historical eras through the study of the humanities. This exposure develops empathy and promotes a culture that is more understanding and aware of the world around them by enabling children to recognize the challenges, victories, and distinctive viewpoints of others.

• Investigating the state of humanity

The humanities investigate the fundamental aspects of life on Earth, including feelings, goals, worldviews, and social structures. Students learn to struggle with age-old concerns about life, morality, and purpose as well as gain knowledge about the intricacies of human nature via the analysis of literature and philosophy.

• Developing analytical and problem-solving skills

Education in the humanities fosters critical thinking, the assessment of opposing points of view, and the methodical solution to challenging issues. Students can challenge presumptions, take into account different viewpoints, and make well-informed decisions by delving into complex texts, artwork, and historical settings.

• Improving expression and communication

Good education is characterized by effective communication. Humanities studies improve one’s ability to write, speak, and read critically, allowing one to express ideas nuancedly, convincingly, and clearly.

• Cultural heritage preservation

Humanities subjects like literature and art conservation guarantee that human civilization is preserved for coming generations. Societies can comprehend the development of human expression and preserve a close relationship to their historical heritage by studying ancient writings, artifacts, and creative works.

Using the key points above you can compose an importance of humanities in our lives essay and the importance of studying humanities essay.

Tips for writing a humanity essay

• Write an outline

Before you start writing your essay, you should write an outline. Writing an outline helps to properly plan and organize your ideas for the essay. In the outline, you should write the key points of the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. Once you begin writing the essay, use the outline as a guide.

• Come up with a strong thesis statement

The thesis statement describes the main purpose of the essay. It should be able to show the reader what your essay entails. For an argumentative essay, the thesis statement should be your stance in the argument while for an expository essay, the thesis statement should be the essay’s key idea.

• Use the correct structure

When writing your essay, you should use the correct humanities essay structure. This ensures there is a flow of information throughout your essay. You should start with the introduction describing what your essay will entail, write the body paragraphs that describe the theme of the essay in-depth, and complete with a conclusion which is a summary of the whole essay.

• Use proper transition words

When transitioning from one paragraph to the next, you should use proper transition words. You should always have a unique idea for each paragraph and if one paragraph has the same idea as the next you should use proper transition words. Examples of transition words include ‘additionally’, ‘therefore’, or ‘however’. Using transition words provides a consistent flow of information throughout your essay.

• Cite all the sources

When writing humanities essays, you conduct research from different academic sources such as books, articles, journals, or internet blogs. You should properly cite all the sources used in your essay. When citing the sources, you should use the writing format instructed to use in your essay.

• Follow all the instructions

When writing your essay, you should follow all the given instructions. This includes the word count and the writing format. You should avoid plagiarism and write an original paper. Plagiarized essays can be easily detected and you can get harsh academic repercussions for that.

• Proofread the essay

You should proofread the humanity essay severally to omit any mistakes. Proofreading also helps you to check if your work is properly organized. In addition, you can also run your essay on Grammarly to remove any missed mistakes.

Humanities topics ideas

Below are the humanities topics for the essay:

• Importance of human rights
• Social changes in third-world countries
• Causes of interstate conflicts
• Eradication of worldwide poverty
• Importance of preservation of historical facts
• Ethical issues in the society
• Ways to fight corruption in developed countries
• Benefits and disadvantages of early marriages
• The role of the judicial system
• Effects of racism

The above are a few humanities research paper topics you can use for your humanities papers. When choosing a topic, you should choose a topic that you are interested in and can write a good essay about it.

Writing a humanity essay requires you to choose a topic, do research, and compose a well-structured essay. This article gives you a guide on how to write a humanity essay. If you need help with your humanity essay, we provide professional help with essays .

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Defining the Humanities Essay

Defining the humanities, cultural event, music as an expression of humanity, comparison of the cultural expressions.

Various definitions have been given to the term humanity. Therefore, humanities are the many characteristics and branches of humanities such as theater, human being, art, culture, literature, food, music and the stories that try to bring out the sense in the world as we see it.

It is a discipline that introduces us into place and ideas that otherwise would not have crossed our minds. To elaborate further, humanities shows how events that took place in the past affect the present and the future, and how a person can evolve from the experience he has gone through and by what he has seen.

Humanities also look into the contributions of people either collectively or individually. An individual may think of the many discipline that humanity has to such as psychology, science and math and others that impact human culture.

“The humanities can be distinguished from other disciplines such as the social sciences, physical and biological because the humanities include the study of human subjects and the study of languages and literatures, the arts, history, and philosophy while all other forms of human inquiry are limited to the study of subjects that are not human (Proctor, 2008)”

These essay aims at bringing out the differences between humanities and the other forms of human inquiry and expressions.

The essay will aim at relating a particular cultural event that took place at a particular point in time and try to explain how the specific cultural event brought to the fore the lessons learnt concerning the humanities, cultural practice, art, style and genius of the period represented.

One of the most important cultural events I have experienced and which relate too is music. By definition, “music an artistic form of sound communication via musical instruments and voice that produce sounds and tones (Shaw, 2010)”. Music has been sung from time immemorial and it is as old as mankind.

The past cultures had music as does the present cultures. Some of the oldest songs were composed in 4 th century and written in cuneiform. By definition, cuneiform is a composition of characters made up of a collection of small wedge-shaped basics that were in use in traditional Persian and Sumerian writing.

“The certainty of how or when the first musical instrument was invented, however, most historians point to early flutes made from animal bones that are at least 37,000 years old (Reich, 2009)”

The music that was played in the late 50’s in Greece represented the humanities or the specific culture of the people of Greece during that era. Therefore, it can be seen that, music as a humanity reflects and mirrors the values and practices held through the life of an individual.

The music played today has undergone dramatic changes from the music that was played 50 years ago. The instruments used have also improved with the use of more modern instrument. The music has also changed with new genre of music coming up.

In the medieval age, only two styles of music were played and they were monophonic and polyphonic music only. From the medieval age, we came to the renaissance period which changed the way songs were composed and sung.

The classic genre of music was practiced in the Baroque era where music writers started composing and singing using various instruments and singing different styles of music. This allowed the artist to tell his story in his own unique way by the use of music.

In the 20 th century, music writers and artists were in a position to use varied instruments which far much sophisticated than instruments used in the medieval era. They make use of computers to change what they want in music, add sound effects and conduct computer work to enhance the sound quality of music.

This period was characterized by the emergence of various styles of music that are widely listened today. The styles include blues, hip-hop, rap, rhythm, rock and roll, gospel among others.

Music was used to express the inner feelings of human beings. There were songs sung during particular periods only to express certain feelings. For example, dirges were sung during funerals to console with the bereaved family. There were war songs that were sung to give the fighters morale to fight.

Music was used a symbol of cultural heritage. Music is conceived through the ear and thus used to express what the human is feeling such as sadness and happiness

The selected form of cultural expression which is music compares to other forms such as literature and storied in that they talked about the issues affecting people at that particular period and how the experiences shaped the future lives. The stories were told by the elderly and passed on to the next generation.

These impacted the present lives. The literature written during this time touched on the contemporary issues affecting people at that time. The literature was written in pamphlets and in scribes while currently it is written in more sophisticated materials such as the computer and laptops.

Therefore, music and literature compare in the sense that they were used to disseminate information that would help shape the lives of people in the future. These cultural expressions have undergone major changes which have made them more refined than in the 19 th century.

Proctor, R. (2008). Defining the Humanities. Indiana : Indiana University Press.

Reich, J. (2009). Culture and Values: A Survey of the Humanities. New York: Cengage Learning.

Shaw, P. (2010). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 29). Defining the Humanities. https://ivypanda.com/essays/defining-the-humanities/

"Defining the Humanities." IvyPanda , 29 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/defining-the-humanities/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Defining the Humanities'. 29 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Defining the Humanities." October 29, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/defining-the-humanities/.

1. IvyPanda . "Defining the Humanities." October 29, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/defining-the-humanities/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Defining the Humanities." October 29, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/defining-the-humanities/.

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Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, getting college essay help: important do's and don’ts.

College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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Stanford Humanities Today

Arcade: a digital salon.

I have been thinking of this essay as a road map to the ideas and practices of public humanities, a map that would help answer the title question, "why public humanities?" Because I am a historian, I do not usually think in terms of maps; my brain believes that all stories are chronological, and readers would be lost without a timeline to guide them. But public humanities practitioners find maps newly fascinating, and I have attended enough conferences and art exhibits, and reviewed enough digital projects, ranging from practical discussions of analog and virtual tours to abstract visions of maps as new forms of the archive, to know that there are many ways to chart ideas and practices. [1]

Approaching the topic from a number of vantages, this essay will look at some beginning points for public humanities; work through definitions; talk about the stakes for faculty and students–and the universities and communities in which they work–and consider whether public humanities could be transformative rather than simply translational. No matter how you map public humanities, discussions of collaboration and social justice need to be at the center. I also map the on-campus world while knowing that we have many colleagues who work "in public" outside the university, and their contributions inform our own.

I teach in the Department of American Studies at Brown University and recently stepped down as Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage. The center's master's students in public humanities often rewrote the Wikipedia entry on public humanities as part of their coursework in the introductory class as taught by Steven Lubar. I see Wikipedia as a gigantic public humanities project, and so the exercise worked on several levels. Recently the Wikipedia record read:

Public humanities is the work of engaging diverse publics in reflecting on heritage, traditions, and history, and the relevance of the humanities to...civic and cultural life. Public humanities is often practiced within federal, state, nonprofit and community-based cultural organizations that engage people in conversations...and present lectures, exhibitions, performances and other programs for the general public...Public Humanities also exists within universities, as a collaborative enterprise between communities and faculty, staff, and students. [2]

I find my own definition of public humanities within the field of social practice art as undertaken by New Urban Arts, a youth arts organization in Providence, Rhode Island. Putting the humanities in conversation with the arts proves crucial because the arts are the subject of the humanities. What can we learn from artistic methodologies? My definition moves away from the translational–the explanation of university-generated ideas to the public–and imagines the humanities as a process of discovery undertaken by collaborative groups–including university faculty, staff, and students–with communities outside the campus. [3]

Many programs that are doing the same work have different names. A series of university programs that center students and their experiences are called service learning. Others, coming out of the social sciences, talk about student and faculty work in the community as civic engagement. [4] The word engagement takes a prominent role in several of the efforts that seem closest to my definition of public humanities. A group of art historians has begun to think about building an engaged art history, and Daniel Fisher, at the National Humanities Alliance, talks of "publicly engaged humanities." [5]

Historian Robyn Schroeder brilliantly lays out the evolving definitions of public humanities, and their contradictions, in a recent anthology that I edited, Doing Public Humanities . [6]   Schroeder writes about how public humanities evolved in response to concerns of the political left and right and of museums and universities, and how it was strengthened by fears of a decline in university jobs for PhDs. I recognize my own definition when Schroeder writes that "new 'convergences' between arts initiatives and publicly engaged scholarship shared a common critique of 'conventional' university practices which they hoped to unmake and a politics of the local which enlivened this work...of vernacular democratic educational action." Schroeder shrewdly shows how the public humanities "caught fire" when it "intersected with changing perceptions of the job market for humanities doctorates...influenced by neo-liberalization of university hiring practices, rapid growth in the museum and broader cultural sectors and a generational shift in career orientation which emphasized social outcomes over private gain." [7]

Using an n-gram, Schroeder traces the concept of public humanities to the 1970s but shows how the concept took off in the 1990s. Yet, in 2000, when I drafted a proposal for a Center for Public Humanities that would, in collaboration with the Department of American Studies, offer an MA program, my only references were to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the State Humanities Councils. We knew about public history from reading and publishing in The Public Historian (now nearing its fortieth anniversary issue) and attending National Council for Public History meetings (which began in 1980). And we learned even more about museum studies by working and having fellowships in museums big and small. [8] We were also influenced by writers and bloggers about the field, by the new digital humanities, and by organizations beginning to move beyond the translational humanities described in our proposal.

Brown's Center for Public Humanities was established in 2002, with the two-year MA program starting in 2005. It is still the only program in the country offering a public humanities degree to both MA and doctoral students on the way to a PhD. Brown's public humanities MA program replaced one in museum studies as those of us in American studies sought a curriculum and students that were more interested in communities (like students in African American, ethnic, and women's studies), more interdisciplinary, and more expansive than museums. On our campus, the Center for Public Humanities and the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) grew together, both with public-facing missions. Established as a result of the 2006 report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, authored by faculty in history, Africana studies, and American studies, the CSSJ declares its mission is "to examine the history and legacies of slavery in ways that engage a broad public." [9] An early project was a jointly funded fellowship for a public humanities MA student in "the public history of slavery." The CSSJ describes its work as public humanities, ranging from collaborations with global slavery museums to programs for local high school students. [10] The partnership between the Center for Public Humanities and the CSSJ has enriched the public humanities and kept race and justice at the core of Brown's definition of public humanities.

Beyond our campus, several intellectual currents at the turn of the twenty-first century proved important to how we taught and thought about public humanities. American culture scholar Julie Ellison's work, in particular, combined theory and praxis in illuminating ways. As we planned for public humanities at Brown, Ellison and her colleague David Scobey "were developing an engaged arts and humanities presence at the University of Michigan." In 1999, at a national conference sponsored by the University of Michigan, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the White House Millennium Council, they launched Imagining America: Artists + Scholars in American Life, a national organization. With publications, graduate students as important participants, and an annual conference, Imagining America became a touchstone and key resource for those working in public humanities. [11]

In the essay "This American Life: How Are the Humanities Public?" Ellison presented a preliminary reading of Humanities Indicators' data on American life. She wrote of the "intense anxiety, across all sorts of colleges and universities, around higher education's public mission" and noted that "the tensions between universities and the communities that surround them are deeply cultural and are definitely a matter for the humanities." But she was also excited by "blurring" the line between the arts and humanities "in interesting ways." Finally, Ellison pointed to the importance of the "ongoing histories of race and ethnicity, migration and diaspora" as "one of a number of places where these histories can be told and rectified." [12] Considering collaboration, Ellison used the word "bridging"–a concept that blogger and curator Nina Simon also referenced in her Museum 2.0 blog and later work–to understand how humanities content could improve reciprocal collaborations. [13]

In 2013, Ellison, in "The New Public Humanists," describes "a new sort of public humanities...finding traction in American colleges and universities" and cites Scobey as calling for an "effort to knit together public work and academic work." Ellison was excited that "concrete, programmatic changes on campus point to a robust challenge to the habitual academic-public binary in the humanities." She credited graduate students for reimagining the public humanities as they reacted to negative factors (a difficult job market and a "simple neo-liberal pre-professional model") as well as to the positive appeal of potentially more interesting careers. In addition, Ellison noted that "practitioners of the new public humanities were producing books and essays that cannot be understood outside the conditions of collaborative production–direct, coequal involvement with living people and organizations." [14]

At this point on our map–and in the corresponding chronological story (historians never quit)–we have academic programs that have been established; we have the beginning of a theory and methodology for public humanities; and we have a national organization that is working on the ground. But one set of questions always arises when we talk about transformational public humanities: what changes are necessary for faculty and students, and eventually for the universities in which they operate?

In 2015, a group of college and university faculty and students interested in public humanities formed a regional organization to talk together about some of the issues raised by public humanities. The North Eastern Public Humanities Consortium (NEPH) had founding members from the Ivy League (Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and Yale); private universities (Tufts and Lehigh); and public universities (University of Delaware, University of Massachusetts Boston, and Rutgers University –Newark). During five annual meetings and from a variety of collaborations, participants explored what public humanities meant to college pedagogy, academic bureaucracy, faculty careers, and university-community interaction. Only Brown's and Yale's programs carried the name "public humanities," but the other campuses understood the work they were doing (including oral history, material culture, digital humanities, and community collaborations) as public humanities.

The NEPH collaborated on a white paper, which historian Matthew Frye Jacobson included as part of a recent essay. The white paper describes interlocking crises that faced the university–crises of atomization, division, confusion and doubt, amnesia, and anomie–and bemoans the diminishing of "the American university's most far-reaching public charge as a community resource and as incubator, catalyst and democratic steward of the society's intellectual resources." The most deeply felt part of the NEPH manifesto was, I think, the material on the role of knowledge creation, a description of the job of the faculty:

The knowledge we produce is squarely rooted in the best methods and practices of our professional training, yet it is often more expansive and dimensional for being generated in dialog with diverse partners...Our project is not merely to get the work of the university out into the world (though it is partly that, too), but to build new archives, create new paradigms, recover buried histories, and weave new narratives of the sort that can only be produced when guild members cease to speak amongst themselves exclusively. [15]

When discussing the ways in which faculty and students practice public humanities, I want to begin with the NEPH's positive vision of such a practice. Most such discussions start with the negative: with the question of whether public humanities scholarship "counts" toward tenure. The connected question is whether and how we should train graduate students to do this kind of work if it does not count or if such training exists only as a back-up plan for PhDs who cannot find tenure-track jobs (the so-called alt-ac track). I understand the materiality and importance of such questions but believe we should first explore why we would want to undertake this scholarship and then consider how it fits or reshapes current systems.

Many faculty members in the humanities–in the traditions of African American studies, ethnic studies, women's studies, American studies, public history, and cultural anthropology, for example–have long conceived, directed, and participated in public humanities projects. We have done them because we felt a special commitment to our communities; because it was part of the mission of our departments; or because such work fit our scholarly interests. While it has been part of our practice, it is not always recognized by our departments or universities. According to the Humanities Indicators, "in an estimated half of humanities departments," "faculty members (or staff and students) work with state humanities councils or community groups." At the same time, the Humanities Indicators demonstrate that most departments do not consider public humanities when evaluating scholarship: "only an estimated 11% of departments indicated that such activity was 'very important' or 'essential' for tenure." [16] Here, the Humanities Indicators provide evidence that faculty are doing public humanities work despite not being recognized professionally for that work. For many faculty members, public humanities projects supplement, or even make possible, the scholarship that is recognized. For at least some faculty members, tenure is not the only issue in planning their scholarly work. A closer look at these faculty practices might help us understand the true value of the humanities. A useful study would categorize and interview the faculty involved in the 1,800 public projects described in the National Humanities Alliance's blog, Humanities for All. [17] If such projects do not count, why do faculty undertake them?

The disconnect between faculty practice and tenure expectations deserves scrutiny, raising several issues and a couple of possible ways forward. First, there may be a simple (but challenging) stickiness to the rubrics. While public humanities has been widely accepted, tenure committees change their expectations slowly and only under pressure. The Humanities Indicators note that "a growing number of commenters in recent years have pointed to public humanities as a vehicle for elevating the profile of the field." [18] The American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the National Council on Public History continue to update their joint report "Tenure, Promotion, and the Publicly Engaged Academic Historian," which was first published in 2010 and last modified in 2017, to remind history departments of the importance of public, particularly museum, work for tenure. [19] We must continue to work at this ground level to have our contributions recognized.

Beyond acceptance of this form of scholarship by universities and their tenure committees, public humanities challenges the rubrics themselves. Tenure requirements represent a retrograde way of defining and evaluating faculty work while public humanities points to a new, more expansive definition of scholarship. As the North Eastern Public Humanities Consortium white paper notes,

we challenge the norms of the gatekeeping function of the modern university as arbiter of what ascends to the status of "knowledge." There is such a thing as vernacular theorizing and wisdom; communities know. This local knowledge is often lost to the university in its capacity as a credentialing institution and in its guild-like guardianship of instructional capital. [20]

By changing the definition of scholarship, public humanities blurs the lines between research, teaching, and service on which so many rubrics are built. I routinely serve on departmental tenure committees that struggle to contain innovative projects within one category. Creative junior scholars present scholarship that also contributes to their teaching and service work. The tenure committee struggles to discipline such unruly projects so that they are legible to university tenure and promotion boards. As such projects multiply, and as pressure continues from scholarly societies, departments, and faculty members alike, rubrics will have to change, but that change happens slowly.

As part of the process, and as a way to continue to grant tenure to innovative scholars, I have begun to think about a "scholarship of public humanities" and how that might be imagined. I recently edited the collection Doing Public Humanities , which presents case studies of work done by the faculty, staff, and students affiliated with Brown's Center for Public Humanities in collaboration with local communities. The book models the scholarship of public humanities and shows the central role of racial justice in the subject and approach of the essays; the importance of case studies as a format; and the intertwined nature of public humanities with the arts. The publication, featuring essays by scholar-practitioners, helped make our scholarship legible to the university and to the larger scholarly community.

I want to consider the scholarship of public humanities in a big frame: what would it mean to do a different kind of scholarship, to change scholarship itself? But we need to think in a small frame as well: how do we do this work in a university/department that has not changed? I learned about the big frame–how to change our scholarship–by working at New Urban Arts. I learned about the small frame by working at an Ivy League university, about three miles away. My essay in the Doing Public Humanities anthology compares New Urban Arts, and the education and creative practice they undertake, with what happens at Brown, and tries to explore both the big and small frames for public humanities.

New Urban Arts is an art studio for emerging artists and high school students, housed in a storefront across the street from three high schools in Providence. The artists serve as volunteer mentors–more guides than teachers–to the students; the students choose their mentors and have enormous power within the organization and over their own art-making. In 2016–2017, New Urban Arts served over five hundred students (about half came more than once a week) and twenty-five emerging artists who volunteered as mentors. Only 12 percent of the students identified as White and 82 percent qualified for free or reduced-price lunch according to income guidelines. The organization had eight staff members and a budget of about $500,000. I have worked with New Urban Arts for more than ten years, at first more as a volunteer than as a faculty member, until my time there became my scholarly research.

The form of art practiced at this storefront provides important lessons for how we think about the humanities and scholarship. Newcomers to New Urban Arts repeatedly ask: "what is the art" in the organization's name? Is it the work the students produce? Or do the students serve as apprentices and their mentors produce the art with student help? Or does the studio offer classes ("How to Make Art") and the art is produced somewhere else, maybe after the students and the mentors leave, education in hand?

New Urban Arts has collectively thought about these questions. They state that they foster a "creative practice":

What if creativity were a social enterprise rather than an individual one? What if our creativity was measured not by a finished artwork–the innate talent it may suggest or the prescribed expectations it may meet–but by the extent to which that work was fueled by our own process, our own questions, and by our relationships with one another? [21]

With this definition, New Urban Arts places itself directly in the field of social practice art and changed how I thought about humanities scholarship. Exploring social practice art (which, like public humanities, goes by many names), I looked not only at New Urban Arts but also at Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial, the work of Wendy Ewald, and Project Row Houses in Houston and, by extension, the organization Creative Time. [22] How social practice artists understand their practice changed mine. For my purposes, social practice art believes that art is public and community-based; the creative process is as important as the product; work is collaborative; and the practice employs a social justice framework, examining oppression and inequality. Like all social practice art, what happens at New Urban Arts is participatory and engaged with and answerable to a community. And from its beginnings, New Urban Arts rooted itself in social justice activism, addressing issues of racial inequality in its programming and service, and saw its work as a chance to create with students enrolled in the poorest schools in Providence.

I looked at New Urban Arts and asked: why does our scholarship not look more like social practice art? Why is there not a New Urban Humanities? I hope that our book Doing Public Humanities documents and analyzes a public humanities rooted in process and collaboration and dedicated to political activism: we do not do research about communities; we do research with communities and then present what we have learned together. We see the essays as exploring, as well, the small-frame view of the scholarship of public humanities. The book shows that public humanities scholars can write about their projects (what they have learned and been taught) in formats that can be peer-reviewed, following historians and anthropologists in relying on case studies. Public humanities as a collaborative humanities, undertaken in a social justice framework and written through engaged case studies, could change how the humanities are viewed and provide a road map for changing the world. This is the kind of humanities I want to practice.

One important influence in thinking through a public humanities scholarship would be the field of digital humanities, which emerged at the same time as, and is often intertwined with, public humanities. Digital humanities takes up, for example, the issue of expertise and its location. When archives are accessible online for all to see, what is the role of the scholar? In addition, digital initiatives often make room for collaboration (crowdsourcing in digital parlance) and so need to consider questions of authorship and authority. The two fields have much to learn from each other and continued dialogue could help both. [23]

A good example of the scholarship of public humanities is the Humanities and Public Life series from the University of Iowa Press, edited by Teresa Mangum and Anne Valk and sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Study at the University of Iowa. [24] The series currently has seven books in print, ranging from English literature to history to geography. [25] The books "strike a...balance between reflection and analysis of the project's significance and impact...and the 'story' of the project as it unfolded." Mangum notes, "we started so that people who are doing public scholarship or working with communities would have a way to represent their work in a format that would be intelligible to their colleagues." The challenge in such work, according to Mangum, is not that the university scholarship overwhelms the community programs who struggle to understand it, but the opposite: humanities scholars sometimes forget that they have anything to contribute when faced with the compelling and successful community organizations with whom they collaborate. [26]

The "goals of the publicly engaged humanities," as Daniel Fisher outlines, show what the humanities scholar brings to public work. Fisher uses examples from the Humanities for All website and presents five overarching goals for the public humanities: informing contemporary debates; amplifying community voices and histories; helping individuals and communities navigate difficult experiences; expanding educational access; and preserving culture in times of crisis and change. [27] Case studies that simply document the community knowledge that the scholar has "discovered" are incomplete as public humanities projects. They should also highlight the contribution of the humanities to the shared knowledge production. Fisher's ontology pushes faculty and students to think about their contributions.

Conceptualizing the role of the humanities in public projects must be a starting point for training graduate students in public humanities, particularly those enrolled in humanities PhD programs. Just as flipping the switch on the "does it count?" question forces faculty to consider the role of the humanities in the university and in the larger world, in graduate training, we must also change the way we think about what has come to be known as alt-ac. Training in public humanities for graduate students should not only provide skills needed for a job outside the university; it should cultivate a set of approaches that changes how we mobilize and consider the humanities to improve all of our practices, whether working on campus or off. Without changing anything else about how academic jobs are built; transforming the relationship between the university and the community; or recognizing the vibrancy of the nonprofit world and the jobs it includes, the concept of alt-ac is bankrupt. [28] Given the crisis in university hiring, students will need to see the boundaries between universities and nonprofits as porous and train flexibly to move among job options in the nonprofit sector. Both Matthew Jacobson and I have described our work with PhD (and, in my case, MA) students in public humanities introductory and methodology courses that try to enlarge the definition of the humanities and humanities scholarship as they introduce certain approaches to the public. [29]

A public humanities framework should also change undergraduate teaching. For example, humanities faculty could help students understand the nonprofit sector, as business and communications faculty help students with job advice in the for-profit world. The Humanities Indicators show that despite "the need to expose humanities students (at the undergraduate and graduate level) to information on a range of career options," few programs in the humanities required internships or offered "occupationally oriented coursework or workshops." [30] A public humanities approach to the undergraduate curriculum need not be career-driven in order to help students understand how the knowledge and skills they have learned can help them with a job in the "third largest employer in the U.S. economy," namely, the nonprofit sector. [31] In fact, a wider view of the humanities, taking into account how the humanities can be valuable beyond the campus, makes such pedagogy newly important.

One significant project that engages primarily undergraduate students in public humanities and public memory is the Humanities Action Lab (HAL), now headquartered at the Clement Price Center at the University of Rutgers–Newark. HAL brings public humanities back to a focus on social and racial justice. Beginning with the Guantánamo Public Memory Project, HAL now has more than forty partners who "collaborate to produce community-curated public humanities projects on urgent social issues." Humanities students join with community groups to develop local contributions to traveling national exhibits and then host the exhibits in their campus communities. [32]

So teaching public humanities to undergraduates brings a social justice focus and helps humanities departments imagine postgraduate lives for their students. In addition, if we reconceptualize what we teach, how we teach it, and why we are important through a public humanities lens, our projects will be at the center of the university's mission. As the North Eastern Public Humanities Consortium's white paper insists:

The ambitions of Public Humanities, then, require qualities of heart and will that have largely eroded within the neoliberal university–an idealism, a vision, a caring, a humanity that have all suffered under regimes of over-specialization, professionalization, pragmatism, hierarchy, and scale within the postwar academy. [33]

Despite the successful and transformational stories of public humanities in this essay, the pandemic and the racial reckoning of 2019 to 2021 have changed the future in ways this historian cannot foretell. The nonprofit sector, including universities, face big challenges, moral perhaps even more than financial. Within public humanities, the pandemic has halted many projects; changes in program leadership in the North Eastern Public Humanities Consortium and the move to virtual campuses have slowed interactions; and students have joined with communities in an important and continuing racial reckoning that might help some public humanities programs transform their universities or hold some programs to account for their failures. [34] The Mellon Foundation has begun big and exciting initiatives to fund public humanities (named in just that way) in programs situated in universities as well as in communities. But who receives new grants presents, as is the case with all humanities funding, a struggle over too little.

We might, in these uncertain times, learn from our failures and challenges as well as from the many successes noted in this essay and in other narratives of public humanities. My colleagues at Brown's Center for Slavery and Justice, Maiyah Gamble-Rivers, Shana Weinberg, and Anthony Bogues, wrote about the difficulties of exhibiting the Rosa Parks House in Providence. The project's curators explained that the putative exhibit showed how "the practice of doing public history collided with the neo-liberal ethos of the monetization of historical memory" and, more specifically, about the White commodification of Black history. [35] Even before 2021, we faced obstacles to change around issues of racial and social justice as well as because of the difficult relationship between universities and communities. The work is hard and made more complex by the times in which we find ourselves.

I never believed that public humanities alone could change the university or even the humanities. Yet I find hope for change in digital humanities scholar Kathleen Fitzpatrick's beautifully conceived and described concept of "generous thinking," a road map for how to remake the intellectual foundation of the humanities. Fitzpatrick takes her title concept, generous thinking, from David Scobey, one of the founders of Imagining America, and finds its early manifestation in public humanities projects. [36] Many of the most interesting descriptions and prescriptions for a renewal of the humanities, and of the universities that depend on them, begin at the site of public humanities. I like being in the center of the map. Let's see where we can travel from here. 

Author's Note This essay draws from work done in collaboration with staff and students at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University, including Sabina Griffin, Ron Potvin, Marisa Brown, Majida Kargbo, Jim McGrath, and Robyn Schroeder, as well as with friends at New Urban Arts.

About the Author

Susan Smulyan is Professor of American Studies at Brown University. She is the editor of Doing Public Humanities (2020) and author of Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid-Century (2007) and Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting (1996).

[1]  "The New Tour: Innovations in Place Based Story Telling," conference, John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University, September 24–25, 2015, https://www.brown.edu/academics/public-humanities/events/new-tour-innovations-place-based-storytelling-conference (accessed July 19, 2021); Rhode Tour (accessed July 19, 2021); Aurash Khawarzad, "A CUNY Public Humanities Map," The Center for the Humanities, City University of New York, June 10, 2021, https://www.centerforthehumanities.org/distributaries/a-cuny-public-humanities-map (accessed July 19, 2021); and "Torn Apart/Separados," Columbia University, http://xpmethod.columbia.edu/torn-apart/volume/1/index (accessed July 19, 2021).

[2]  "Public Humanities," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_humanities (accessed June 29, 2021).

[3]  Susan Smulyan, "What Can Public Art Teach Public Humanities?" in Doing Public Humanities , ed. Susan Smulyan (London: Routledge, 2020), 28–38.

[4]  In an important early book, Doris Sommer uses all the words. Doris Sommer, The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2014).

[5]  Erin Benay, "Building an Engaged Art History," virtual conference, April 22–23, 2021, https://arthist.net/archive/33444 (accessed July 20, 2021); and Daniel Fisher, "A Typology of the Publicly Engaged Humanities," Humanities for All blog, https://humanitiesforall.org/essays/five-types-of-publicly-engaged-humanities-work-in-u-s-higher-education (accessed May 19, 2021).

[6]  Susan Smulyan, "Doing Public Humanities," Humanities for All blog, November 3, 2020, https://humanitiesforall.org/blog/doing-public-humanities.

[7]  Robyn Schroeder, "The Rise of the Public Humanists," in Smulyan, ed., Doing Public Humanities , 10–16.

[8]  National Council on Public History, "Public Historian," https://ncph.org/publications-resources/publications/the-public-historian/; and National Council on Public History, "About: Our History," https://ncph.org/about/our-history/ (accessed July 20, 2021).

[9]  "Home Page," Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University, https://cssj.brown.edu/ (accessed May 16, 2022).

[10]  "Public History of Slavery Fellowship," John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, https://www.brown.edu/academics/public-humanities/graduate-program/fellowships-and-funding/public-history-slavery-fellowship (accessed June 29, 2021); and "Public Humanities Projects," Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University, https://cssj.brown.edu/work-center/public-humanities-projects (accessed June 29, 2021).

[11]  Imagining America, "History," https://imaginingamerica.org/who-we-are/history/ (accessed June 29, 2021).

[12]   Julie Ellison, "This American Life: How Are the Humanities Public?" in The Humanities in American Life (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2009), 1–8, https://web.archive.org/web/20111005051231/http:/www.humanitiesindicators.org/essays/ellison.pdf.

[13]  Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum (Santa Cruz, Calif.: Museum 2.0, 2010); and Nina Simon, The Art of Relevance (Santa Cruz, Calif.: Museum 2.0, 2016).

[14]  Julie Ellison, "The New Public Humanists," PMLA 128 (2) (2013): 289–298.

[15]   Matthew Frye Jacobson, "Afterword: The 'Doing' of Public Humanities," in Smulyan, ed., Doing Public Humanities , 168–172.

[16]   Humanities Indicators, "Survey, 7. Other Department Policies and Practices," American Academy of Arts and Sciences, https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/higher-education-surveys/7-other-department-policies-and-practices#footnote1_acpb6s9.

[17]   National Humanities Alliance, "Humanities for All," https://www.nhalliance.org/the_publicly_engaged_humanities (accessed July 13, 2021).

[18]  Humanities Indicators, "Survey, 7. Other Department Policies and Practices."

[19]  American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, and National Council for Public History, "Tenure, Promotion, and the Publicly Engaged Academic Historian," April 8, 2010, updated June 4, 2017, https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/statements-standards-and-guidelines-of-the-discipline/tenure-promotion-and-the-publicly-engaged-academic-historian (accessed July 12, 2021).

[20]  Jacobson, "Afterword," 168–172.

[21]  New Urban Arts, "About," https://newurbanarts.org/about/#squelch-taas-toggle-shortcode-content-3 (accessed July 13, 2021).

[22]  Wendy Ewald, Wendy Ewald: American Alphabets (Zurich: Scalo Verlag Ac, 2005). See also Wendy Ewald, Secret Games: Collaborative Works with Children 1969–1999 (Zurich: Scalo, 2000); and Project Row Houses, https://projectrowhouses.org/ (accessed December 29, 2017). For more on social practice art, see Nato Thompson, ed., Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991–2011 (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2012).

[23]  Sheila A. Brennan, "Public, First," in Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 , ed. Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled/section/11b9805a-a8e0-42e3-9a1c-fad46e4b78e5#ch32 (accessed July 19, 2021); and Jim McGrath, "Our Marathon, Five Years Later: Reflections on the Work of Digital Public Humanities," History@Work, National Council on Public History, April 30, 2018, https://ncph.org/history-at-work/our-marathon-five-years-later/ (accessed July 19, 2021).

[24]  "Humanities and Public Life," The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the University of Iowa Press (accessed July 19, 2021), https://humanitiesandpubliclife.uiowa.edu/.

[25]  Anne Basting, Maureen Towey, and Ellie Rose, eds., The Penelope Project: An Arts-Based Odyssey to Change Elder Care (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016); Ruth Sergel, See You in the Streets: Art, Action, and Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016); Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, Contested City: Art and Public History as Mediation at New York's Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019); Bridget Draxler and Danielle Spratt, Engaging the Age of Jane Austen: Public Humanities in Practice (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019); and Rhondda Robinson Thomas, Call My Name, Clemson: Documenting the Black Experience in an American University Community (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2020).

[26]   Interview with author, May 25, 2021; and Teresa Mangum, "Going Public: From the Perspective of the Classroom," Pedagogy 12 (1) (2012): 5–18, https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1425083.

[27]  Daniel Fisher, "Goals of the Publicly Engaged Humanities," Humanities for All blog, https://humanitiesforall.org/features/goals-of-the-publicly-engaged-humanities (accessed October 12, 2020).

[28]  Katina L. Rogers, Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2020).

[29]  Susan Smulyan, "Introduction," in Smulyan, ed., Doing Public Humanities , 1–5; and Jacobson, "Afterword," 165–173.

[30]  Humanities Indicators, "Preparing Students for the Workforce," American Academy of Arts and Sciences (accessed July 19, 2021), https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/higher-education-surveys/5-preparing-students-workforce.

[31]  Chelsea Newhouse, "The 2020 Nonprofit Employment Report: The 3rd Largest Employer Faces the COVID-19 Crisis," Nonprofit Economic Data Project, Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, July 16, 2020, http://ccss.jhu.edu/2020-nonprofit-employment-report/ (accessed July 19, 2021).

[32]  Humanities Action Lab, "About," https://www.humanitiesactionlab.org/about (accessed July 19, 2021); and Liz Svencenko, "The Humanities Action Lab: Mobilizing Civic Engagement through Mass Memory Projects," Diversity and Democracy: Association of American Colleges & Universities blog, February 18, 2017.

[33]  Jacobson, "Afterword," 168–172.

[34]  For one small example of racial reckoning, see Susan Smulyan, "Les Vues d'Amérique du Nord," John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities blog, February 3, 2020, https://www.brown.edu/academics/public-humanities/blog/les-vues-d%E2%80%99am%C3%A9rique-du-nord (accessed July 19, 2021).

[35]  Maiyah Gamble-Rivers, Shana Weinberg, and Anthony Bogues, "The Rosa Parks House: Doing Public Art and Public History in the Age of Neoliberalism," in Smulyan, ed., Doing Public Humanities , 132.

[36]   Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), 1–45.

Article information

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The Future of the Public Humanities

Roland Greene

Is the future of the humanities a public one? In an era of challenges to history, philosophy, literature, and the other humanistic disciplines, utopian thinking about new outlets and broad audiences has become commonplace. Institutions of all sorts promote projects in the public humanities as an unequivocal gain for all, while reflection on the compromises of such projects—not to mention their hazards and omissions—is rarer, and sometimes difficult or unwelcome.

This Colloquy is conceived to demonstrate that a truly public humanities will encourage critical attention to its own premises. The arguments and questionings gathered here generally proceed from an awareness of the long history of intellectual work addressed to the public. They tend to recognize both that now scholarship may go public in more channels than ever—from publication to video to new media—and that, for good reasons, some of the most important work of our time will never find a wide audience. In light of these realities, one might begin by inquiring how the two terms, public and humanities , change as they come into contact, and how what they mean together might be different from what they mean apart. 

Judith Butler's essay, which appeared in a number of the journal Daedalus dedicated to "The Humanities in American Life" in 2022, sets a frame around the Colloquy by insisting that the public humanities must exist not to promote the relevant fields of study for instrumental or market-driven purposes, nor to serve or advertise, but to bring a truly public dimension to the work humanists do. Butler envisions that public dimension as introducing topics of the broadest concern into the work of the humanities, at best reorienting both "the mission of the university" and "the relation between universities and the public." She concludes with a call for a public humanities that issues "a life call, to foster a critical imagination that helps us rethink the settled version of reality." 

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, represented here by an informal reflection that appeared in Arcade's journal Occasion about ten years ago, complements Butler's argument by challenging one form of instrumental thinking about the humanities, namely rational choice, and countering that with a robust defense of the literary imagination. Spivak's argument was developed in her book An Aesthetic Education in the Age of Globalization (2013), which was in press at the time of the essay for Occasion . As Spivak's essay shows, comment on the humanities in the public world has appeared in Arcade for many years now.

Several other recent items propose their own interpretations of a public humanities. Doris Sommer narrates three engrossing examples of how the provocations of public art (especially conceptual, avant-garde, or marginal) can prompt social change. Natalie Loveless describes "research-creation" as a practice of art informed by scholarly work (say, in history or cultural theory) that forces a reconsideration of the boundaries between not only disciplines but intellectual media and of the "rendering public (publishing) of research within a university context." Hannah Kim discusses the potential as well as the costs of applying virtual reality to the public representation of history. In a searching interview on the evolving idea of liberty, Quentin Skinner reflects on how his view of the relation of the applicability of the past to the present has changed and why he accepts the role of a public intellectual today.

In a talk for the Stanford Humanities Center in 2022, Kyla Schuller responded to my first question—about how her public-oriented book The Trouble with White Women (2021) evolved from a more conventionally academic project—by noting the diversity and sophistication of public readerships. "People are hungry for what scholarship can teach us," Schuller said, as she observed that audiences for books like hers do not exist in waiting but are convened by work that dares to educate and confront them. In an interview, Rey Chow expands on her book A Face Drawn in Sand: Humanistic Inquiry and Foucault in the Present (2021), in part a critique of recent adaptations (not only public-oriented but environmental, digital, and computational scholarship) as more or less at odds with a non-utilitarian kind of humanities. Two influential figures who are active in institutions, Susan Smulyan and Zrinka Stahuljak, describe how their centers at Brown and UCLA are adapting to the needs of public scholarship today. 

As in all Colloquies, especially on topics as open as this one, the work continues. We encourage contributions about the responsibilities of public-oriented writing in a post-factual society; the challenges of accommodating multilingual, recondite, or profoundly historical scholarship into the public humanities; and the nature and value of research that will never go public. We would be glad to receive first-person accounts of careers and projects in terms of the public humanities. Comments, suggestions, and submissions are welcome.  

View the discussion thread.

What are My Colloquies?

My Colloquies are shareables: Curate personal collections of blog posts, book chapters, videos, and journal articles and share them with colleagues, students, and friends.

My Colloquies are open-ended: Develop a Colloquy into a course reader, use a Colloquy as a research guide, or invite participants to join you in a conversation around a Colloquy topic.

My Colloquies are evolving: Once you have created a Colloquy, you can continue adding to it as you browse Arcade.

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Insight – Charles Sturt University

Why we still need to study the humanities

The story of us – Homo sapiens – is intriguing and complex. We’re unique creatures living in a rapidly changing world and we continue to face new challenges and opportunities. The study of humans, and all we’ve done, has always been of value. But studying the humanities now is probably more important than ever before!

We chatted with Charles Sturt University’s Jared van Duinen, who’s been teaching humanities for more than 15 years, and asked: what exactly are the humanities and why is it so important to study them in the 21 st century?

So, what are the humanities ?

First things first. When you sign up to learn about humanities, what sorts of topics will you study?

“Well, traditionally, the humanities are those disciplines that deal with human interaction, society and how humans get along in society. So think history, sociology, philosophy, politics, English literature and Indigenous studies.”

Why is it so important to study humanities?

Learning about ourselves – through the various humanities – helps us to create a better world.

“It’s the human in humanities that is worth studying. Humanities can tell us about ourselves, how we interact and get along and why we sometimes don’t!”

“Studying the humanities helps us to better understand who we are, our identity as a people, a society and a culture, and how to organise our societies so we can achieve our goals.

“Importantly, the study of humanities is a wonderful way of exploring our Charles Sturt ethos of Yindyamarra Winhanganha.

“Obviously STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – has a role to play in creating a world worth living in. But the study of humanities can help create a better world, just as much, if not more so, than scientific and technological innovation.”

Tackling the world’s issues

Jared believes that understanding the humanities can help you deal with all sorts of issues and problems facing the world. Big, small and ‘wicked’ ones! How? By taking you behind the human scene, giving you an insight into some really valuable information, and equipping you with a unique set of skills.

• History. Studying the past helps us understand where we’ve come from and learn lessons to help us deal with the future.  
• English literature helps us explore the great themes of human interaction and better understand each other.
• Sociology helps us to understand human behaviour, culture and the workings of society.
• Philosophy helps us to think well, clearly, ethically and logically.   
• Politics. Learning about political processes and their impacts will help us understand how social and political change occurs.
• Indigenous studies is especially important because Australia has an Indigenous population. If we’re trying to create a world worth living in, a fuller understanding of the perspective of our Indigenous population is essential.

A practical reason to learn about the humanities – the ultimate skill set!

The other super valuable reason to study humanities is more practical. Studying humanities will give you knowledge and skills that you can use all throughout your working life! And grads who study in this field are catching the eye of more and more employers.  

“People who study these disciplines are really important to employers. They gain these important, sought-after skill sets:

• effective communication
• critical thinking
• creative thinking
• emotional intelligence
• working well in teams
• cultural understanding
• problem solving.

“Humanities grads have always had these skills in abundance, but for a long time these skills were disregarded or overlooked because they were generic. They didn’t speak to a particular vocation.

“But the world of work is changing, becoming more unpredictable. It’s suggested that a lot of graduates coming out of uni now will change careers five to seven times. So those more well-rounded, transferable or soft skills you gain from studying history, philosophy or English literature will really become important. Having them is now seen as a strength because you can carry them from one occupation to your next. And recent studies highlight that these types of soft skills – the ones humanities graduates gain – are what helps them land jobs. 

“Employers say these skills matter. They can teach technical knowledge, but they don’t always have the time or know-how to teach employees these vital soft skills. They look for employees who have these skills well-honed and are ready to work.”

Studying humanities gives you a swag of soft or transferable skills. That means you’ll be the employee who is more flexible. You can pivot from one role to another and adapt faster to changing roles. You become an asset. Now – and definitely into the future! 

What jobs are there in humanities?

So, guess you want to know what sort of career you could go into? Studying humanities with Charles Sturt can really take you places – even if you’re not sure where you want to go just yet.

What sort of jobs, you ask?

• Public service – in local, state and federal government. (History grads often end up in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade!)
• Non-governmental organisations, not-for-profit groups and advocacy groups
• Corporate sector – management and marketing, publishing and media
• Social work
• Policy work

“Studying humanities through our revitalised Bachelor of Arts allows you to study a wide range of disciplines. And that’s especially ideal for those who aren’t quite sure what career path they’ll go down. Those who don’t necessarily know what job they do want, but know they want to study.”

But what about the rise of job automation. How will studying humanities protect you from losing a job to a robot? It all leads back to those very special skills that you’ll build!

“With the increasing automation of many industries, those skills that are resistant to automation, such as critical thinking, cultural understanding, and creative problem solving, are going to be in greater demand.”

Set yourself up for success – now and in the future!

Want to explore the humanities and build a degree that’s meaningful to you and sets you up for career success? Keen to develop the ultimate soft skill set that will help get your first job – and your second and third and fourth? Check out our Bachelor of Arts and let’s get to work!

Bachelor of Arts CRICOS code: 000649C

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How Studying the Humanities Helps Humanity

More from our inbox:, tuberville’s blockade, and a problem in the senate, living with grief, ethical issues raised by a gilgo beach murders documentary.

To the Editor:

“ Stop Corporatizing My Students ,” by Beth Ann Fennelly (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Nov. 15), is a heartfelt reminder that humanistic studies are critical to developing thoughtful, compassionate and functional citizens. Yes, developing skills to make a living is essential, but, as Ms. Fennelly writes, learning to “fail better” and dream must come first, “for a while anyway.”

During a time of immense technological change, war and political division, nothing is more important than having the intellectual confidence to challenge what you see, hear and read with thoughtful questions. Humanistic study provides young students with an opportunity to develop their intellectual confidence.

We should want our students to graduate intellectually and emotionally confident. That confidence is the foundation for success in the workplace. Too often, we think that skills solve problems, but, in fact, problem-solving starts by asking the right question first.

I taught undergraduates and graduate students for over 25 years, and nothing lights up a classroom more than a student who, for the first time, steps forward to address a problem with their newfound intellectual confidence.

Nao Matsukata Bethesda, Md.

As I apply for college, a constant question in my mind is whether I should major in a lucrative STEM field or in a “useless” humanities field. I want to expand my worldview, “dream, try, fail, try harder, fail better” in a humanities field, but college costs are prohibitively high.

My education should make me a better person, an educated citizen, not just a better part of some machine. We recognize that high schools should be offering a full education, yet we deny the same for expensive universities.

It cannot become the privilege of the wealthy to study the humanities and become fuller people in college.

Toby Shu Englewood, Colo.

In 1978 I graduated from college with a degree in philosophy. One might consider this a useless degree. Yes, it took me three years after graduation to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life, but I then got a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy. I have had a successful career in private practice as a psychotherapist for 40 years and have founded and run an online school for professional continuing education as well as a nonprofit organization.

I use the thinking and listening skills that I learned in my philosophy classes every single day in both my private practice and my other businesses. I learned discipline and time management by going to class every day and completing assignments in a timely manner. The writing skills that I had to develop as well have been invaluable to me and my career.

I also believe that the critical thinking skills learned in liberal arts programs protect democracy and freedom.

Christina Veselak Wayne, W.Va.

As an astrophysicist, I study distant denizens of the dark universe. Similar to Beth Ann Fennelly’s experience as a creative writing teacher, people often point out that my work is useless. I usually smile and say, “I completely agree, but some of the most useless endeavors are among the most important.”

Rebecca Oppenheimer New York The writer is a curator and a professor of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.

Re “ Military Promotions Approved After Tuberville Lifts His Blockade ” (front page, Dec. 6):

There must be a collective sigh of relief within the Beltway, and most certainly at the Pentagon, now that Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, has dropped his blockade of most military promotions over the policy of abortion access for military personnel.

While this senator’s action was certainly reprehensible, the Senate did not even attempt to address the real issue. It’s the Senate’s archaic rules that give an individual senator the power to put a hold on any nomination.

The real issue is why an individual senator has such dictatorial power. Interestingly, neither party is willing to open that Pandora’s box because all senators relish it. That is the real problem.

Subir Mukerjee Olympia, Wash.

Re “ It’s OK to Never ‘Get Over’ Your Grief ,” by Mikolaj Slawkowski-Rode (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 3):

For those of us who lost a parent or sibling in childhood, the idea that we should one day be over our grief is not just hurtful, but harmful as well.

I applaud this guest essay and would point out that encouraging people to move past their grief is particularly bad for kids who may blame themselves when they can’t. People who don’t understand this are usually those who have yet to live through the loss of someone they depended on for self-definition.

Dr. Slawkowski-Rode correctly blames Freud for our continued psychological approach to loss, but after Freud lost his daughter Sophie, even he changed his thinking on grief. Unfortunately, his earlier writings were already widely read and would go on to influence generations of clinicians.

For people who have grown up grieving, loss is part of who we are. We can no more “get past it” than erase ourselves.

Ann Faison Pasadena, Calif. The writer is the host of the podcast “Are We There Yet? Understanding Adolescent Grief” and is the author of “Dancing With the Midwives: A Memoir of Art and Grief.”

Re “ Outcry Follows True-Crime Deal for Wife of Gilgo Beach Suspect ” (front page, Nov. 29):

That Peacock, the streaming service owned by NBCUniversal, is paying the family of an alleged serial killer for participation in a documentary series about the murders, and had to outbid other avaricious media companies equally eager to capitalize on the public’s insatiable appetite for true-crime programming, the more salacious the better, is as disturbing as it is unsurprising.

Until very recently, true-crime stories were relegated to scripted movies and television productions, not because studios and networks had taken the moral high ground, but because documentaries historically did not garner high enough TV ratings or pull in large enough audiences to theaters to make it profitable to produce them.

Streaming has changed all that. It’s a bottomless pit, in constant need of content, the cheaper and the more likely to attract audiences the better. Unscripted programming, in particular documentaries, fits the bill perfectly.

Lost in all of this are the victims’ families, who not only stand to be retraumatized by the documentary series but will also see the family of the alleged killer, as well as their attorneys, reportedly being paid large sums of money. They also worry, with justification, that the documentary series might affect the trial.

NBCUniversal and its fellow media services should stop doing such programming out of a sense of decency, but obviously won’t. It’s up to viewers to give them a reason they’ll immediately understand: Stop tuning in.

Greg Joseph Sun City, Ariz. The writer is a retired television critic.

Here are 9 reasons why humanities matter. What’s your number 10?

I didn’t know these things either until I saw the list of winners of the 2013 Digital Humanities Awards and had a good look at an infographic called The Humanities Matter!

There’s research on the impact of the humanities; there’s evidence demonstrating how studying the humanities benefits society, employers and individuals.

I’ll list here nine arguments that the humanities are important. While you read them, try to think of what you would fill in as number 10.

• The humanities help us understand others through their languages, histories and cultures.
• They foster social justice and equality.
• And they reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual and intellectual sense of the world.
• The humanities teach empathy.
• They teach us to deal critically and logically with subjective, complex, imperfect information.
• And they teach us to weigh evidence skeptically and consider more than one side of every question.
• Humanities students build skills in writing and critical reading.
• The humanities encourage us to think creatively. They teach us to reason about being human and to ask questions about our world.
• The humanities develop informed and critical citizens. Without the humanities, democracy could not flourish.

I believe these claims and I know they are based on solid research. I see much more, too. For example, I think that innovations based on research results in the natural sciences and medicine are more likely to be successful if their implementation is carried out in collaboration with humanists.

But for now, let me just say one more thing. The arguments in the list above are quotes. They come from an exciting infographic put together by some creative researchers working in a whole new field called Digital Humanities.

And that leads me to my 10th reason: If it weren’t for the humanities, we couldn’t have the digital humanities!

What’s your best reason for thinking the humanities are important? If you have one you like, send me a tweet or put it in a comment below, and if I get enough, I’ll include it in a new blog post!

While you’re thinking about that, enjoy a much cooler presentation of the nine reasons the humanities matter — along with many more important numbers, too.

The infographic you see below was made by  Melissa Terras ,  Ernesto Priego ,  Alan Liu ,  Geoff Rockwell ,  Stéfan Sinclair , Christine Hensler, and  Lindsay Thomas  over at 4humanities.org . Enjoy!

One of the problems with tracing arguments such as these is the lack of precision. We start off discussing the humanities, and then we segue into AHSS. Of course the majority of politicians in Westminister have studied AHSS, since PPE is almost a prerequisite to a political career.

Of arguments 1, 2, 4, and 9 above, there are enough counterexamples that I begin to wonder if we do ourselves favours by having examples that aren’t solid. If the above arguments were presented as ‘evidence’ in the social sciences, I can imagine the collective disciplinary eyebrow heading skyward in scepticism and questioning the lack of methodological rigour.

Helen Small’s recent book “The Value of the Humanities” goes through these and other justifications for the humanities, tracing their genealogies, and without finally plumping for one. My sense is that you and she have a similar, cumulative sense of argument, that there is no, one, stand-out, knock-down argument for the humanities, but rather that it’s an ecology of such arguments. The above infographic is, of course, a bit of fun, but it’s a an appeal-to-Buzzfeed defence of the humanities, and we can do better.

It is a bit popularistic, I agree. I think the “new” arguments that deserve careful development include inter-disciplinary perspectives. Why does technological innovation, for example, need to be carried out with the input not only of physicists and chemists, but also French teachers and art historians? What do we mean by “digital humanities” and how is that going to lead to new knowledge and maybe even new applications affecting daily lives? There are many strategies to take. And while I sometimes find political anti-humanities arguments exhausting, I actually think it’s important for everyone to be able to say something sensible about what they’re up to. So … I’ll keep working on this 🙂

Thank you for the idea of making the list.

In addition to that, I think the significance of research in SSH (I do not differentiate them) can be also be justified by the following argument:

The human factor plays a crucial role in solving the grand challenges of mankind (ageing, energy supply, environmental issues, climate change, etc.). That’s why research on human values and behaviour is vital.

The biggest problem in the world is lack of mutual understanding among people, social groups, religions, nations. SSH researchers are specialists in that.

All modern professions are based on interaction between people. Trade, services, manufacturing, administration, education, and personal life benefit from the ability to conduct proper communication. Even small progress in that may lead to big results.

Arto Mustajoki Dean of the Faculty of Arts Helsinki University

The humanities as disciplines of study have their own intrinsic value. Apple, is perhaps, one of the best market/commercial examples of how the humanities permeate all aspects of human life. Apple’s ability to evolve and dominate the markets is largely because of its understanding of the human aspect of engaging with technologies, being able to predict and teach the consumer what s/he wants from his/her experience with their device. There’d be a lot fewer conflicts in the world if we all were in better touch with our humanity! Great posting!

9 Trackbacks

• Circles of Innovation » Humanities for Everyone
• 4 Benefits of taking a random module in varsity – MiCampusMag
• as my humanities journey ends .. – My Understanding
• The Humanities Matter – Arts & Humanities Matters
• When Good Isn’t Good Enough . . . Things I’ve Learned :: Jim Cloughley
• 10 Humanities You Should Learn to Become an Outstanding Entrepreneur
• The Humanities-A Film Review – Caitlin's Blog
• Here are 9 reasons why Humanities matter – Sky Blog
• Democracy In Higher Education – Shameka's Portfolio

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This article was originally published on Curt Rice - Science in Balance . Read the original article .

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1.1: Introduction to Humanities Overview

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 205480

• Lori-Beth Larsen
• Central Lakes College

This course is an introductory survey of the genres and themes of the humanities. Readings, lectures, and class discussions will focus on genres such as music, the visual arts, drama, literature, and philosophy. As themes, the ideas of freedom, love, happiness, death, nature, and myth may be explored from a western and non-western point of view.

Chris Abani : On Humanity

Chris Abani tells stories of people: People standing up to soldiers. People being compassionate. People being human and reclaiming their humanity. It’s “ubuntu,” he says: the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.

One or more interactive elements has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view them online here: https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/introductiontohumanitiesv2/?p=28#oembed-1

Core Humanities Essay Contest

Win $500 toward tuition for spring 2025.

Students may submit Spring 2024 and Fall 2024 Core Humanities essays by December 1, 2024. We are offering prizes for the best essays in each CH 201, 202, and 203 course. Winners will be announced in early 2025.

The CH Essay Prize

The Core Humanities Department is pleased to offer the CH Essay Prize. This prize recognizes exemplary essays produced over the calendar for the collective CH201, CH202, and CH203 classes. The three prizes (1 st $500, 2 nd $250, and 3 rd $100) will be awarded to the best essay of the year during the winter break after each fall semester. Awarded funds will be applied to the spring semester’s tuition. Therefore, students in their junior year or below are invited to apply.

Eligibility

Students who receive an A grade on an essay submitted to CH 201, CH202, or CH203 are eligible and are invited to submit their essays to: [email protected] . Submissions should include the instructor’s essay prompt.

Selection Process

Essays will be judged based on the ability of the essay to respond to the instructor's prompt as well as the core objectives of the class. Strong candidates will have a thesis statement that clearly presents the point to be proven in the essay. Other factors include artistic use of rhetorical style, effective use of textual evidence, and mastery of technical conventions. The selection committee is composed of the Core Humanities Executive Committee and the Distinguished Teaching Assistants.

Q: Does my instructor need to nominate me?

A: No, students submit their essays directly to the department. Although, your instructor knows about the prize and may recommend that you submit your excellent essay.

Q: Can I turn in the version of the essay that I turned in to my class assignment or do I need to revise it?

A: Students are advised to revise based on their instructor's feedback before submitting their essays for consideration. The CH Department might have other resources available to help polish the submissions.

Please contact Sean O’Neil at [email protected] for further information.

Past CH Essay Prize Winners and Essays

2023 winners.

• Marseille Van Duyn (202) - 1st
• Isabella Hart Nibbrig (202) - 2nd
• Zach Shaffer (202) - 3rd

2022 winners

• Michael Karo (203) - 1st
• Eddy Zhelayev (201) - 2nd
• Sage Tippie (202) - 3rd