The Humanities at Hopkins
Do you want to...
Tackle research through our archaeological museum?
Curate your own exhibit for a class?
Comb through manuscripts in our rare books collection?
Pursue a creative writing career?
Create an original documentary at our state-of-the-art film center?
All this and more is possible as a humanities student at Hopkins. Our university values of freedom and exploration and our interdisciplinary academic culture encourage students to transcend boundaries.
How do you define humanities?
As a field, the humanities intersects literature, art, philosophy, history, and cultural studies among other areas. Humanities scholarship aims to better understand the human condition through intellectual curiosity, open-mindedness, and careful reading and criticism.
At Hopkins, some of our humanities majors and minors include: archaeology; classics; English; German and romance languages and literatures; history; history of art; history of science, medicine, and technology; Near Eastern studies; philosophy; and Writing Seminars. With a flexible curriculum, students have the freedom to choose the subjects that matter most to them and combine areas of interest in unique ways, with plenty of interdisciplinary courses to try out.
The vital role of a humanities education
"Hopkins believes in the essential value of humanistic inquiry and its capacity to aid you in realizing your aspirations and building lives you want to live and of which you will be proud."—Ronald Daniels, Johns Hopkins University President
Why Hopkins
Interdisciplinary Study
The study of arts, cultures, community, and the self is fundamental to understanding the human experience. The essence of studying the humanities at Hopkins is collaboration, exchange, and intellectual freedom. Here, faculty eagerly collaborate with students to break new ground and make an impact on society.
Incredible Resources
Our humanities students take advantage of being at the top funded research institution to pursue ambitious scholarship. In addition to funding opportunities and continued mentorship, undergraduates have access to resources like the Peabody Library, Archaeological Museum, and JHU-MICA Film Centre.
Core Identity
Although we are the nation’s oldest research university, we are a liberal arts college at our core. Our liberal arts focus is designed to guide students from all perspectives, to cross educational boundaries, and to teach students how to think, thereby preparing our graduates for success in any field they choose to pursue.
World-class faculty
Lawrence Jackson, English and History
Vesla Weaver, Racial Politics and Criminal Justice
Christopher Cannon, English and Classics
The best opportunities
As the university with the nation's most research funding, our resources and opportunities ensure students are uniquely prepared to tackle societal issues, regardless of their post-Hopkins ambitions.
Hopkins offers several research funding fellowships and special programs for undergraduates:
Creating better portrayals of disabilities through the transformational power of fiction.
Investigating Victorian studies of ancient Greek sexuality at the Classics Research Lab.
Mapping the unspoken “rules” that govern the way a person writes through one letter.
Humanities in the news
- A message from President Daniels to students on the humanities
- Investor Bill Miller commits $75 million to Johns Hopkins Philosophy Department
- Hopkins philosophy professor receives 2018 Hiett Prize in the humanities
- Four Johns Hopkins PhD candidates in the fields of humanities and social sciences receive fellowships
- To be a good doctor, study the humanities
- TED Talks Daily: Why tech needs the humanities
- JHU Press to digitize more than 200 out-of-print books