About
The Department of Global Humanities and Religions (prior to Fall 2019: Department of Liberal Studies) is an interdisciplinary humanities department. The department’s mission is to support excellent interdisciplinary programs for teaching, learning, and scholarship in the humanities. The department meets this mission through a wide array of general education courses, six different minor programs (including a new one in African Studies!), and two B.A. programs, one in Humanities, the other in Religion and Culture. It partners with other departments, programs, colleges, institutes, and centers across the university to serve its interdisciplinary mission. See the latest department news here.
Vision
Through the B.A. Humanities and B.A. Religion and Culture programs, the department offers globally engaged, interdisciplinary study of many different societies and cultures, and the ways they have interacted with one another over time. Students in all of the department's courses learn how to read many different kinds of written texts and images with a critical eye, explore their multiple layers of meaning, and understand the worlds from which they came. They practice critical reading, analysis, writing, research, and communication skills. Study of this kind provides students with new kinds of understanding of themselves and of the world around them, and the empathy, confidence, and communicative abilities to skillfully navigate many different environments and make positive contributions to them.
Impact
Gifts to the Department of Global Humanities and Religions are crucial in helping us fund guest speakers, including our annual distinguished speaker, a tradition now in its fifteenth year, in addition to student research opportunities and, most importantly, scholarships.
Meagan Elizabeth Smith Memorial Scholarship for Excellence in the Humanities
This scholarship honors the legacy of Meagan Elizabeth Smith (1993 - 2015). An outstanding student, Meagan was scheduled to graduate with departmental honors in December 2015, with a Humanities major, a concentration in Religion and Culture, and a German minor. She had developed a particular interest in non-Western societies, and especially in Nepal, which inspired the senior thesis she was researching on “Making Sense of Fierce Deities in Indian Religions.” Meagan was a member of the first Liberal Studies Leadership Team, a musician, and an athlete, dedicated to serving the many communities of which she was a cherished part. This is the first named scholarship in the more than fifty-year history of the Global Humanities and Religions, designed to recognize academic excellence in the humanities.
