Program Description
The Humanities major combines a rigorous general education in the humanities with a concentrated focus on a particular discipline or theme. The requirements for the major are designed to allow students to construct a program of study that fits their own intellectual interests.
The curriculum is cross-cultural in foundation and reflects the interdisciplinary strength of our faculty in areas including art history, philosophy, literature, religion, film and media, the visual and performing arts, gender and sexuality studies, and science and technology studies. The Humanities faculty teach courses that span the globe, covering the histories and contemporary cultures of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. In these courses, students learn to employ multiple disciplinary perspectives and to engage with a wide range of different sources, from literary fiction to courtroom trial transcripts, from classical paintings to contemporary political cartoons and posters.
The Humanities major provides students with advanced skills in critical reading, academic writing, visual arts creation, interpretation, analysis and argument that are highly valuable and readily transferable to a spectrum of careers, including law, cultural production, contemporary art curation, journalism, and non-fiction writing. While some Humanities majors pursue post-graduate degrees, many others successfully use the skills they develop in their Humanities studies to pursue a wide range of career paths.
In introductory and foundations courses, students acquire a set of methods for humanistic inquiry. Students then develop an area of thematic or disciplinary focus by choosing advanced courses in Shanghai and other NYU sites in consultation with their advisors. While students may choose to focus on a particular discipline, at least one advanced course must be explicitly interdisciplinary in orientation. In their senior year, students take the two semester Capstone Course sequence and produce a final thesis that marks the culmination of their intellectual development.
Admissions
New York University's Office of Undergraduate Admissions supports the application process for all undergraduate programs at NYU. For additional information about undergraduate admissions, including application requirements, see How to Apply.
Program Requirements
Course List
Course |
Title |
Credits |
CCSF-SHU 101L | Global Perspectives on Society | 4 |
| 8 |
WRIT-SHU 102 | Writing as Inquiry | 4 |
WRIT-SHU 201 | Perspectives on the Humanities | 4 |
| 8-16 |
| 4 |
| 4 |
| 4 |
| 4 |
| |
| 8 |
| What is Art? | |
| What is History | |
| What is Art History? | |
| What is Science and Technology Studies | |
| What is Human Geography? | |
| What is Literature? | |
| Foundations: What is Philosophy? | |
2 | 8 |
4 | 4 |
HIST-SHU 303 | | |
| The Birth of Psychology | |
| Shanghai Stories | |
| Love and Hate in the Time of Dragons | |
| Philosophy of Science | |
| Philosophy of Biology | |
| Philosophy of Technology: Thinking Machines | |
| Capitalism, Socialism, Communism: Theory and Practice | |
| 20 |
HUMN-SHU 400A | Humanities Capstone Seminar I | 2 |
HUMN-SHU 401 | Humanities Capstone Seminar 6 | 4 |
Total Credits | 128 |
Note: These are sample courses. This is not a complete list of courses that fulfill this requirement.
Other Humanities Introductory Courses
Other Humanities Advanced Courses
Visual Arts Praxis Courses
Please note that these courses do not fulfill Humanities major requirements as listed above.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this program, students should be able to:
- Produce powerful and plausible interpretations of sources.
Independently develop arguments.
- Write papers that display sophisticated organization, clarity of expression, and strength of argument.
- Read, interpret and analyze sources from multiple disciplinary perspectives, including for example literary, historical, philosophical and anthropological perspectives.
Evaluate the reach and limits of different types of evidence, for example quantitative evidence, photographic evidence, textual evidence, narrative evidence and artifactual evidence.
- Formulate a research question, identify primary and secondary sources relevant to the question, construct a research strategy to address the question in light of the sources, and successfully carry out the research.
- Independently conceive and execute an academic project, for example a research paper, at the scale of work expected in typical humanities graduate programs in a chosen discipline.
Policies
Prerequisite Courses for Declaring a Major
Final grade of C/ current semester midterm grade of B or higher in Global Perspectives on Society.
NYU Policies
University-wide policies can be found on the New York University Policy pages.
NYU Shanghai Policies
Additional academic policies can be found on the NYU Shanghai Academic Policies page.