A class of students sits on a semi-circular stone bench on a cool day in fall, with leafless trees and a stone building framed behind the group.

The Core

Humanities Core

Part of every first-year student’s course schedule, the Humanities Core is the foundation of Chicago’s general education curriculum. It is instrumental in facilitating the transition from high school to college by helping students become independent thinkers. In small discussion-based seminars, students learn and practice the art of oral argument and dialogue. The Humanities Core teaches students to read closely, think critically, and write effectively. By engaging with texts and artworks of great complexity and enduring significance, students grapple with the philosophical, literary, and aesthetic questions and issues that underpin the humanities: How do great texts shape us and how does our understanding in turn shape them? What is the nature of language and how does it make us human? How do media inform our perception and representation of the world? What does it mean to think philosophically? These are some of the questions, students discuss when they enter the deep and wide-ranging conversation with faculty and other students that is the Humanities Core.

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Humanities Sequences

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