Core Courses

During their first 2 years, students take at least one course from each of the following core areas:

1. Archaeology of the Human Sciences.
Explores the early history of theories of meaning in philosophy, rhetoric, and literature, from the classical to the early modern period.

• HMSC 201: The Idea of the Human Sciences

2. Contemporary Theory in the Human Sciences
Examines major 20^th-century theories of human consciousness and meaning-making, from psychoanalytic theory to Marxism to Frankfurt School criticism to poststructuralism, among others.

• HMSC 202: Critique of Enlightenment Thought
• HMSC 202: Poststructuralist Account of Subjectivity
• PHIL 214: Structuralism and Hermeneutics

3. Language, Meaning, and Interpretation
Focuses primarily on theories of human language and its central role in the construction of human meanings, drawing on linguistics, semiotics, hermeneutics, and literary analyses.

• HMSC 203/ANTH 203: Linguistic Anthropology
• ENGL 223: Performance Theory and Performativity
• REL 249: Myth, Ritual, and Language

4. Historical Issues in the Human Sciences
Focuses primarily on theories of history and historical interpretation, with attention to the problems of historical objectivity and questions about the possibility of historical truth.

• HMSC 204: National Mythologies
• ENGL 247: Postcolonialism
• HIST 201: History and Historians

5. Culture and Society
Focuses primarily on the interpretation of cultural objects, drawing on both anthropological approaches to the study of culture as a set of meanings and institutions (be it religion or kinship), and media or cultural studies approaches for interpreting specific cultural products (such as film or literature).

• HMSC 205: Culture Studies: Gender, Geography, Alterity
• AMCV 272: Cultural Theory and American Studies
• PHIL 238: Feminist Ethics

6. Techniques of Critical Reading
Involves students in the close reading of major texts and/or cultural artifacts, in which they bring to bear the techniques and theoretical models from other courses. Examples include:

• HMSC 206: Reading Lacan
• HMSC 206: Reading the Mahabharata
• ART 243: Seminar in American Art
• SPAN 122/123: (expanded): Don Quijote