The Core Gets More Humane

Three of the new Humanities general education courses offered this fall will count for Literature and Arts A core credit, professors announced this week.

But none of these courses made it into the Registrar’s course listing—either in print or online—as core bypasses, and the decision on the fourth Humanities course introduced this semester will not be made until a later date.

Interim Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles wrote in an e-mail last night that he and Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 recently learned that the new courses had never been considered by the appropriate core committees. Knowles and Gross therefore made the decision to approve the courses themselves instead of waiting for the Core Standing Committee and the appropriate core sub-committees to begin their fall meetings.

“We hope that this action will help both students and faculty, and partially repair the fact that the courses were not properly considered—as we should have wished—last term,” Knowles wrote.

Humanities 10, “An Introductory Humanities Colloquium,” Humanities 12, “‘Strange Mutations’: Classical and Renaissance Representations of the Human Condition,” and Humanities 16, “Existential Fictions: From Saint Augustine to Jean-Paul Sartre and Beyond” will all count for Literature and Arts A credit.

This semester’s fourth humanities course, Humanities 14, “Existentialism in Literature and Film,” and all of the Humanities courses planned for the spring will be considered for core bypass status by the appropriate committees in the coming weeks, Knowles added.

The Core Office directed questions yesterday to Core Program Director Susan W. Lewis, who could not be reached for comment.

Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language Louis Menand, one of the instructors of Humanities 10, said yesterday that while the Humanities courses don’t fit exactly into the standard model for core courses, current undergraduates need new core options until a full replacement for the core can be established in the coming years.

Menand is the co-chair of a six-member committee that has been meeting since June to draft a revised set of recommendations for the future of general education at the College. The committee’s preliminary report is expected to be released within weeks.

“A lot of the [Humanities] courses don’t fit very cleanly into the core categories because they are interdisciplinary,” Menand said.

But, he added, “I think that there was a realization since last spring that we are in a transitional moment...[The Humanities classes] are general education courses of some kind, and students should get credit for taking them.”

—Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu.