Humanities dominate approved courses so far, but not necessarily the curriculum

Humanities professors are drawing up courses for the new General Education curriculum in full force, contributing nine courses to the Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding category—more than a third of all courses approved by the General Education Standing Committee.

“We will encourage every member of the Department to develop at least one course for Gen Ed,” History department chair James T. Kloppenberg wrote in an e-mailed statement.

Classics department chair John M. Duffy said he has similar plans.

“We are certainly going to be submitting a very lively menu of courses,” he said.

Science professors have submitted the fewest courses for approval so far, according to Harris.

When asked if the Physics department has a plan for new Gen Ed courses, department chair Christopher W. Stubbs said, “I’ll pass.” Stubbs also said that he expects six Physics courses from the Core to move into Gen Ed.

Even though Harvard’s humanists are out-performing their peers in other disciplines in getting Gen Ed classes approved, professors said they still worry about whether the humanities will have a significant place in the program.

In fact, even if there are dozens of offerings in Aesthetic and Interpretative Understanding, most students will choose to take only one class in the category.

“I think that’d be a real shame if that was the only humanities category,” said Gen Ed committee member Alexander N. Chase-Levenson ’08, a History and Literature concentrator in Winthrop House.

Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding and Culture and Belief—the two categories in Gen Ed that are closest to the humanities—were added to the program late in the curriculum’s five-year review.

Susan R. Suleiman, acting chair of the Literature department, said that she is concerned about the representation of the humanities in the new curriculum.

“If every Harvard student had graduated having taken only one course on literature and aesthetics, I would be extremely sad,” she said. “In a way, this is a regression from the Core.”

Suleiman said that success for the humanities in the new curriculum will depend on students going beyond requirements and choosing to take more classes on their own.

“In that sense, we are close to the Brown [University] model in that we have faith that students will choose well,” she said.

English professor Homi K. Bhabha, director of the Humanities Center, said that the humanities play an important role for other disciplines as well.

“The humanistic disposition is as relevant to the sciences—soft and hard—as it is to the social sciences,” he wrote in an e-mail. “General Education has a duty to serve both humanities departments and the larger cause of humanistic thinking and belief.”

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.