humanities essay intro

16.8 Spotlight on … Humanities

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe various disciplines in the humanities.
• Evaluate employment opportunities for graduates with humanities degrees.

Although all college instructors value good writing, each area of study has its own set of criteria by which writing is judged. For instance, the loose informal style and speculative content of a reflective essay might be appropriate for an English class but inappropriate for an anthropology class in which the instructor would expect the more formal structures established in that subject area.

As a discipline, the humanities include subjects that focus on human culture and values. Some subjects are literature, languages, classics, art history, film, musicology, philosophy, religion, and often history, which sometimes is placed in the social sciences. The humanities are the foundation of liberal arts and, as such, include a wide variety of writing genres. Research reports, biographies, literary analyses, ethnographies, quantitative reports, proposals, books, journal articles, poetry, film scripts, novels, stories, technical writing, and professional documents are forms of writing particular to the humanities.

As a rule, knowledge in the humanities focuses on texts and on individual ideas, speculations, insights, and imaginative connections. Interpretation in the humanities is thus relatively subjective. Accordingly, much of the writing and research in the humanities is characterized by personal involvement, lively language, and speculative or open-ended conclusions.

The field of English includes the study of not only literature but of literary theory and history, and not only composition but creative and technical writing. In addition, English departments often include linguistics, journalism, folklore, women’s studies, cultural or ethnic studies, and film. In other words, within even one discipline, you might be asked to write several distinct types of papers: personal experience essays for a composition course, analyses for a literature course, abstracts or case studies for a linguistics course, procedural texts for a technical writing course, and short stories for a creative writing course. Consequently, any observations about the different kinds of knowledge and the differing conventions for writing about them are only generalizations. The more carefully you study any one discipline, the more complex it becomes, and the harder it is to make a generalization that does not have numerous explanations.

Careers in the Humanities

Because humanities subjects emphasize critical thinking and clear writing, the skills humanities students obtain are valued in many fields other than the most obvious ones. Humanities majors have gone on to careers in law, medicine (humanities plus pre-med), advertising, journalism, TV and film writing and production, public relations, graphic design, teaching, technical and medical/scientific writing, human resources, and many others. For more information about career opportunities for humanities students, see these sites:

• Humanities and Social Sciences Careers
• Top 10 Highest Paying Jobs for Liberal Arts Majors
• 25 Great Jobs for Humanities Majors

Students’ Stories

Despite strong interest in the humanities—especially in reading, writing, and language—some students avoid humanities subjects as majors because they think they won’t find jobs after graduation. Such fear, however, is unwarranted, as many organizations actively seek students who major in languages or in other humanities disciplines. These graduates are valued for their ability to interpret and analyze text and to write clear, concise, and compelling prose. Moreover, employers realize that students who concentrate on studying people—whether real or fictional—develop insights into human behavior and understanding of how to deal with it. For example, these students who graduated with degrees in humanities subjects have found rewarding work in humanities-related and business fields.

Gabriela Torres majored in film studies, with a minor in theater. Although more interested in the technical aspects of both, she took creative writing classes and enjoyed performing in several college productions. Soon after graduation, Gabriela joined the human resources (HR) department of midsized corporation. Her job is to train new hires and conduct in-service workshops for current employees. Recently her role has expanded to writing, producing, and acting in training videos in which she uses the skills she learned in college—and more.

Derrek Wilson became an international studies major after he received a summer stipend to study in Europe. After only a few weeks there and trips to historic sites, Derrek says he got “hooked on history.” The broad focus of his interdisciplinary major allowed him to take courses in humanities subjects: history, geography, religion, archaeology, and world literature. He had studied Spanish in high school and continued in college. Derrek graduated last year and now works as an international program coordinator for his university. Responsible for logistics of foreign students coming to the United States and for American students going abroad, he oversees housing accommodations, student visas, and travel arrangements. He loves his job and the time he gets to spend in different countries, but he plans to go to law school in a few years—with, you guessed it, a specialty in international and immigration law.

Despite his parents’ warnings that he’d never find a good job, Nick Marelli majored in English. He put his literary interests to work in college as managing editor of the literary magazine and arts editor of the newspaper. When he graduated, he applied, on a whim (and to please his parents), for a management trainee position at a large insurance company. Thinking he would get nowhere without business courses, he was surprised when a recruiter called him for an interview. The interviewer then told him that the company actively seeks English majors because they know how to read carefully, digest and summarize information, think critically, and write clearly, concisely, and correctly. Nick says, “I was surprised when I heard someone other than an English teacher say that. I really like my work, where I’m learning a lot on the spot rather than in a classroom.”

Thinking, Writing, and Publishing

Critical writing requires critical thinking. When an individual or collaborative team articulates their perspective, they provide new knowledge for audiences. In essence, all texts have potential to create new knowledge. A writer of any type of text has the potential to enter a conversation and show audiences new ways to look at a subject.

Learning how to write analytically and critically offers a skill set for crafting various genres, such as information reports, proposals, cost/benefit analyses, instructions, and so on. After you have completed your analysis for this chapter, consider submitting it to an open-access academic journal that highlights the work of undergraduate students in the humanities, such as these:

Undergraduate Journal of Humanistic Studies

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Professor Celia A. Easton Department of English State University of New York College at Geneseo  

Read a successful essay on Thucydides written by a student in my Fall 1999 section of Humanities 220.

Conventions of Writing Papers in Humanities

approximately one inch margins on all sides page numbers in the upper right hand corner of each page (you may do this by hand; do not number page one) your name, the course number, your professor's name, and the date typed in the upper right hand corner of the first page of your paper (no cover sheet). one staple or paper clip to hold the pages together (no report covers) a final page (which should be numbered but does not count in your total pages) headed with the title "Works Cited."  Do not put that phrase in quotation marks.  List all books you have cited, even if there is only one book in your list. no footnotes or endnotes, unless they are explanatory (all citations will be parenthetically noted in your text).

Fielding satirizes the hypocritical intellectualism of the clergy through the utterances of Parson Barnabas in Joseph Andrews .  Pushed for an explanation of spiritual requirements by Joseph, who believes he will die shortly, Barnabas defines by tautology: "Joseph desired to know what [Christian] forgiveness was.  'That is,' answered Barnabas, 'to forgive them as -- as -- it is to forgive them as -- in short, it is to forgive them as a Christian'" (Fielding, 49).  Exhausted by his physical condition, Joseph abandons his spiritual quest. Fielding implies that Barnabas' healthy parishioners are regularly exhausted by their spiritual leader's obfuscated doctrine.

Pantheon, 1985.

Heights: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1982.

Mifflin, 1960.

Literary History 10 (1979): 557-580.

in Europe from Prehistory to the Present .  Vol. 1.  New York: Harper and Row, 1989.  2 vols.

HACC is closed on Monday May 27th in observance of Memorial Day.  

The second floor of McCormick Library is closed beginning May 10th for elevator modernization and repairs. For details, see our Alerts page.  

HUM 101 - Introduction to Humanities - Rose

What are the visual arts, comparing/contrasting western & non-western visual arts, what are the performing arts, comparing/contrasting western & non-western performing arts.

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Things to Keep in Mind

• In your critical reviews, you will investigate three out of six categories of visual and performing arts:   architecture; music; film; painting; sculpture, and Theatre.
• You will also be completing a comparison/contrast essay on Western / Non-Western Arts.
• This guide contains recommended resources for finding sources, tips on keyword searching, and examples of comparisons between Western and Non-Western arts.

When using the term "art", the visual arts are usually the first kind of the arts that come to mind for most people. However, this visual arts can further be broken down into the categories of painting, printmaking, sculpture, decorative arts, architecture, and photography.

Mary Cassatt visited an exhibition in Paris on Japanese woodblock prints. This experience served as her inspiration for a series of art in which she attempted to emulate aspects of the Japanese style.

When thinking about the "performing arts" as a category or particular type of "the arts," music, dance, and theatre are probably the types of performance most people think of first. These are also sometimes called the "traditional" forms of performing arts. It should also be noted that other, sometimes less frequently studied forms of performing arts include: mime/pantomime, oral histories, magic, festive rites and rituals, and more.

Western Performing Arts Example

Scene from Act V of William Shakespeare's tragedy  Hamlet  from a film version produced in 1948 by CTE Carlton in which Laurence Olivier plays the title role. Accessible to HACC students and staff through the  Films on Demand database. 

Non-western Performing Arts Example

Segment from the video Performing Arts: Part One,  a program that examines the revival of indigenous art forms. This clip shows Australian Aboriginal music and dance.  Accessible to  HACC  students and staff through the  Films on Demand database . 

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• Last Updated: May 16, 2024 10:11 AM
• URL: https://libguides.hacc.edu/humanities101

How to write an introduction for a history essay

Every essay needs to begin with an introductory paragraph. It needs to be the first paragraph the marker reads.

While your introduction paragraph might be the first of the paragraphs you write, this is not the only way to do it.

You can choose to write your introduction after you have written the rest of your essay.

This way, you will know what you have argued, and this might make writing the introduction easier.

Either approach is fine. If you do write your introduction first, ensure that you go back and refine it once you have completed your essay. 

What is an ‘introduction paragraph’?

An introductory paragraph is a single paragraph at the start of your essay that prepares your reader for the argument you are going to make in your body paragraphs .

It should provide all of the necessary historical information about your topic and clearly state your argument so that by the end of the paragraph, the marker knows how you are going to structure the rest of your essay.

In general, you should never use quotes from sources in your introduction.

Introduction paragraph structure

While your introduction paragraph does not have to be as long as your body paragraphs , it does have a specific purpose, which you must fulfil.

A well-written introduction paragraph has the following four-part structure (summarised by the acronym BHES).

B – Background sentences

H – Hypothesis

E – Elaboration sentences

S - Signpost sentence

Each of these elements are explained in further detail, with examples, below:

1. Background sentences

The first two or three sentences of your introduction should provide a general introduction to the historical topic which your essay is about. This is done so that when you state your hypothesis , your reader understands the specific point you are arguing about.

Background sentences explain the important historical period, dates, people, places, events and concepts that will be mentioned later in your essay. This information should be drawn from your background research . 

Example background sentences:

Middle Ages (Year 8 Level)

Castles were an important component of Medieval Britain from the time of the Norman conquest in 1066 until they were phased out in the 15 th and 16 th centuries. Initially introduced as wooden motte and bailey structures on geographical strongpoints, they were rapidly replaced by stone fortresses which incorporated sophisticated defensive designs to improve the defenders’ chances of surviving prolonged sieges.

WWI (Year 9 Level)

The First World War began in 1914 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The subsequent declarations of war from most of Europe drew other countries into the conflict, including Australia. The Australian Imperial Force joined the war as part of Britain’s armed forces and were dispatched to locations in the Middle East and Western Europe.

Civil Rights (Year 10 Level)

The 1967 Referendum sought to amend the Australian Constitution in order to change the legal standing of the indigenous people in Australia. The fact that 90% of Australians voted in favour of the proposed amendments has been attributed to a series of significant events and people who were dedicated to the referendum’s success.

Ancient Rome (Year 11/12 Level)  

In the late second century BC, the Roman novus homo Gaius Marius became one of the most influential men in the Roman Republic. Marius gained this authority through his victory in the Jugurthine War, with his defeat of Jugurtha in 106 BC, and his triumph over the invading Germanic tribes in 101 BC, when he crushed the Teutones at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae (102 BC) and the Cimbri at the Battle of Vercellae (101 BC). Marius also gained great fame through his election to the consulship seven times.

2. Hypothesis

Once you have provided historical context for your essay in your background sentences, you need to state your hypothesis .

A hypothesis is a single sentence that clearly states the argument that your essay will be proving in your body paragraphs .

A good hypothesis contains both the argument and the reasons in support of your argument. 

Example hypotheses:

Medieval castles were designed with features that nullified the superior numbers of besieging armies but were ultimately made obsolete by the development of gunpowder artillery.

Australian soldiers’ opinion of the First World War changed from naïve enthusiasm to pessimistic realism as a result of the harsh realities of modern industrial warfare.

The success of the 1967 Referendum was a direct result of the efforts of First Nations leaders such as Charles Perkins, Faith Bandler and the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

Gaius Marius was the most one of the most significant personalities in the 1 st century BC due to his effect on the political, military and social structures of the Roman state.

3. Elaboration sentences

Once you have stated your argument in your hypothesis , you need to provide particular information about how you’re going to prove your argument.

Your elaboration sentences should be one or two sentences that provide specific details about how you’re going to cover the argument in your three body paragraphs.

You might also briefly summarise two or three of your main points.

Finally, explain any important key words, phrases or concepts that you’ve used in your hypothesis, you’ll need to do this in your elaboration sentences.

Example elaboration sentences:

By the height of the Middle Ages, feudal lords were investing significant sums of money by incorporating concentric walls and guard towers to maximise their defensive potential. These developments were so successful that many medieval armies avoided sieges in the late period.

Following Britain's official declaration of war on Germany, young Australian men voluntarily enlisted into the army, which was further encouraged by government propaganda about the moral justifications for the conflict. However, following the initial engagements on the Gallipoli peninsula, enthusiasm declined.

The political activity of key indigenous figures and the formation of activism organisations focused on indigenous resulted in a wider spread of messages to the general Australian public. The generation of powerful images and speeches has been frequently cited by modern historians as crucial to the referendum results.

While Marius is best known for his military reforms, it is the subsequent impacts of this reform on the way other Romans approached the attainment of magistracies and how public expectations of military leaders changed that had the longest impacts on the late republican period.

4. Signpost sentence

The final sentence of your introduction should prepare the reader for the topic of your first body paragraph. The main purpose of this sentence is to provide cohesion between your introductory paragraph and you first body paragraph .

Therefore, a signpost sentence indicates where you will begin proving the argument that you set out in your hypothesis and usually states the importance of the first point that you’re about to make. 

Example signpost sentences:

The early development of castles is best understood when examining their military purpose.

The naïve attitudes of those who volunteered in 1914 can be clearly seen in the personal letters and diaries that they themselves wrote.

The significance of these people is evident when examining the lack of political representation the indigenous people experience in the early half of the 20 th century.

The origin of Marius’ later achievements was his military reform in 107 BC, which occurred when he was first elected as consul.

Putting it all together

Once you have written all four parts of the BHES structure, you should have a completed introduction paragraph. In the examples above, we have shown each part separately. Below you will see the completed paragraphs so that you can appreciate what an introduction should look like.

Example introduction paragraphs: 

Castles were an important component of Medieval Britain from the time of the Norman conquest in 1066 until they were phased out in the 15th and 16th centuries. Initially introduced as wooden motte and bailey structures on geographical strongpoints, they were rapidly replaced by stone fortresses which incorporated sophisticated defensive designs to improve the defenders’ chances of surviving prolonged sieges. Medieval castles were designed with features that nullified the superior numbers of besieging armies, but were ultimately made obsolete by the development of gunpowder artillery. By the height of the Middle Ages, feudal lords were investing significant sums of money by incorporating concentric walls and guard towers to maximise their defensive potential. These developments were so successful that many medieval armies avoided sieges in the late period. The early development of castles is best understood when examining their military purpose.

The First World War began in 1914 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The subsequent declarations of war from most of Europe drew other countries into the conflict, including Australia. The Australian Imperial Force joined the war as part of Britain’s armed forces and were dispatched to locations in the Middle East and Western Europe. Australian soldiers’ opinion of the First World War changed from naïve enthusiasm to pessimistic realism as a result of the harsh realities of modern industrial warfare. Following Britain's official declaration of war on Germany, young Australian men voluntarily enlisted into the army, which was further encouraged by government propaganda about the moral justifications for the conflict. However, following the initial engagements on the Gallipoli peninsula, enthusiasm declined. The naïve attitudes of those who volunteered in 1914 can be clearly seen in the personal letters and diaries that they themselves wrote.

The 1967 Referendum sought to amend the Australian Constitution in order to change the legal standing of the indigenous people in Australia. The fact that 90% of Australians voted in favour of the proposed amendments has been attributed to a series of significant events and people who were dedicated to the referendum’s success. The success of the 1967 Referendum was a direct result of the efforts of First Nations leaders such as Charles Perkins, Faith Bandler and the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. The political activity of key indigenous figures and the formation of activism organisations focused on indigenous resulted in a wider spread of messages to the general Australian public. The generation of powerful images and speeches has been frequently cited by modern historians as crucial to the referendum results. The significance of these people is evident when examining the lack of political representation the indigenous people experience in the early half of the 20th century.

In the late second century BC, the Roman novus homo Gaius Marius became one of the most influential men in the Roman Republic. Marius gained this authority through his victory in the Jugurthine War, with his defeat of Jugurtha in 106 BC, and his triumph over the invading Germanic tribes in 101 BC, when he crushed the Teutones at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae (102 BC) and the Cimbri at the Battle of Vercellae (101 BC). Marius also gained great fame through his election to the consulship seven times. Gaius Marius was the most one of the most significant personalities in the 1st century BC due to his effect on the political, military and social structures of the Roman state. While Marius is best known for his military reforms, it is the subsequent impacts of this reform on the way other Romans approached the attainment of magistracies and how public expectations of military leaders changed that had the longest impacts on the late republican period. The origin of Marius’ later achievements was his military reform in 107 BC, which occurred when he was first elected as consul.

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Writing Core Humanities essays

Writing is a major component of the Core Humanities program. It is also an essential skill that will help you to succeed in other courses and in your life beyond college. People who can express themselves clearly in writing have definite advantages over those who cannot, so take advantage of the writing opportunities provided in each course to practice getting better at this.

To write well, you must first have a sound grasp of the rules of grammar, but this alone is not enough to ensure good writing. You also need to think about the way you organize your ideas, how you present your argument, how you incorporate evidence and how you move from one idea to another in your essay. The following guidelines will help you to produce clearly written, well-supported, persuasive essays and to hone your communication skills.

Start early . Unless you are incredibly brilliant, you will not be able to write a really good essay the night before it is due. Insightful, well-organized papers result from careful thinking, re-reading of texts and re-writing of rough drafts, all of which take time.

Decide on a thesis . Good essays are more than just collections of facts or quotations from the readings. They are written with a clear point in mind - something the author wants to say. If the assignment is in the form of a question, your thesis will be your answer to the question. Make sure you have an answer before you begin to write. Do not simply write down everything you know about a topic without addressing the question.

Make an outline . Once you have decided what you are going to say, think about how you are going to say it. What evidence will you use to support your thesis? How will you arrange the evidence? How will you make sure your reader sees the same connections between your evidence and argument that you see? Making an outline forces you to think in an organized manner and arrange your thoughts in a sequence that makes sense. You can always change the organization of your essay later if you think of a better way to arrange your material, but you should always draw up some kind of plan before you begin to write.

Pay attention to structure . The "classic" essay structure (introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion) is classic for a reason: it works. Your introduction should set out clearly and succinctly the thesis of your essay, each body paragraph should provide evidence and/or analysis relating to the main point, the conclusion should summarize (again, succinctly but in different words from the ones you use in your introduction) what you have said.

Use graceful transitions . Your essay should flow logically and coherently from one paragraph to the next. Start a new paragraph for each new idea and try to make the first line of each paragraph relate in some way to the point you made in the preceding one. This is called a transition, or how you get from one idea to another. Just like changing gears, accelerating, or braking in a car, your transitions should be smooth, so that the reader hardly notices them. Good transitions can turn an above-average paper into one that is really classy.

Acknowledge any words and ideas that are not your own . You must properly recognize other people's words by enclosing any phrases taken directly from another source in quotation marks and providing the source information (author's last name, followed by the page number) in parentheses at the end of the sentence in which the quotation appears [e.g.: (Casper and Davies, 49)]. Ideas taken from outside sources and paraphrased in your own words, as well as little-known facts and statistics, must be acknowledged in the same way as direct quotations. See the advice about  avoiding plagiarism  for more information about how to acknowledge and cite sources.

A first draft does not mean you are finished . Read over, correct and re-write your first draft to eliminate bad grammar and syntax, unclear sentences, clumsy transitions, typing errors and spelling mistakes. Keep in mind that the spelling and grammar-check functions on your computer, although useful for a first run through, are no substitute for reading your paper carefully yourself.

Keep to the page limit . Being able to express your ideas clearly and succinctly is a valuable skill and revising an over-long paper to keep within a defined limit helps you to get better at this. If your first draft exceeds the page limit, go back and cut out any unnecessary words or sentences. Finding ways to restate your ideas more directly usually results in a better paper.

Think you are done?  Not quite. Proofread your paper again before you submit it to eliminate any new mistakes that might have crept in when you were revising it. It is often helpful to ask a friend or family member to read your paper before submitting it to make sure it all makes sense and to pick up any errors you may have missed.

Ask for help if you need it . Remember that your instructors are here to help you if you get stuck. If you are having trouble understanding the readings or lectures, email or make an appointment to see your discussion leader or professor. Your discussion section meeting each week is also a good time to ask any questions you have about the material.

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Your Guide to Writing a Humanity Essay

Humanity is showing compassion and kindness to others. Writing a humanity essay involves analyzing various aspects of humanity in detail. This article gives you a guide on how to write a humanity essay.

Humanity essay examines the traits, beliefs, relationships, and experiences of people. It focuses on what it is to be human, as well as the struggles, victories, and bonds we make. The human experience is vast and complex, and writing a humanity essay paper allows you to explore this whether your assignment is to write on historical events, personal experiences, philosophical ideas, or societal issues.

How to write a humanity essay

Below is how you write a humanity essay:

• Choose a topic

Humanity is a broad subject thus you should narrow it down to one of its subtopics. For instance, on a topic like war, you can narrow down to the causes and effects of a war. You should choose a topic that you are interested in and compose a good essay about it.

• Write an essay outline

After choosing the topic, you should conduct in-depth research and write the information from the research in an essay outline. You should properly structure your essay outline where you note down the key points of every section of the essay. This includes the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. Once you start writing your humanity essay, you should use the essay outline as the point of reference.

• Write the introduction

You should begin the introduction with a hook to grab the reader’s attention. This could be an interesting fact about your topic or a rhetorical question. Give background information on the topic and state its relevance. Write a strong thesis statement describing the essay’s main idea. For a better understanding of how to write the introduction, you should research various humanities essay introduction examples.

• Write the body

The body describes the essay’s theme in depth. You should write well-structured paragraphs with a topic sentence that introduces the paragraph’s key point. Then write middle sentences giving fact-based information or examples of the paragraph’s key point. You should also give your interpretation. Complete the paragraphs with a concluding sentence.

Each paragraph should have a unique key point and if two paragraphs are about the same point use proper transition words such as ‘in addition’, ‘however’, or ‘moreover’. When writing the paragraphs, you should explore the essay’s theme giving your analysis and backing it with factual information or statistics. Always cite all the sources you researched your essay from using the instructed writing format.

• Write the conclusion

The conclusion is a summary of the humanity essay thus you should not bring new information to it. You should summarize the essay’s key point. Rephrase the thesis statement and state its significance. Complete the conclusion with a closing statement or a call to action.

Using the steps above, you will be able to compose a good humanity essay. You can structure your humanity essay into a 5-paragraph essay . Research various humanities essay examples to properly comprehend the humanities essay structure.

What kind of essays do humanities use

Below are the various kinds of essays that humanities use:

• Analytical essays

Analytical essays dissect a complicated subject into its constituent parts and examine the connections, importance, and ramifications of each. Critical thinking and making connections between various aspects are prerequisites for these writings.

• Expository Essays

Expository essays give in-depth explanations of a concept on a topic. These essays offer a thorough and impartial investigation of the topic, frequently with the use of illustrations, proof, and understandable explanations.

• Comparative essays

A comparative essay entails comparing and analyzing two or more concepts, books, artworks, and historical events. These essays draw attention to the similarities and differences between the concepts being compared as well as a thorough comprehension of each.

• Literary Analysis Essays

Literary analysis essays analyze and interpret literary works, including plays, novels, and poetry. The topics, characters, symbolism, storytelling devices, and historical background of the work are all explored in depth in these studies.

• Argumentative essay

Argumentative essays provide a coherent argument and back it up with facts, logic, and refutations. These essays require the writer to take a stance on a certain subject and defend their argument throughout the essay.

Importance of humanities in our lives

Below is the importance of studying humanities and the importance of humanities in our lives:

• Promoting cultural understanding and empathy

People can immerse themselves in many cultures and historical eras through the study of the humanities. This exposure develops empathy and promotes a culture that is more understanding and aware of the world around them by enabling children to recognize the challenges, victories, and distinctive viewpoints of others.

• Investigating the state of humanity

The humanities investigate the fundamental aspects of life on Earth, including feelings, goals, worldviews, and social structures. Students learn to struggle with age-old concerns about life, morality, and purpose as well as gain knowledge about the intricacies of human nature via the analysis of literature and philosophy.

• Developing analytical and problem-solving skills

Education in the humanities fosters critical thinking, the assessment of opposing points of view, and the methodical solution to challenging issues. Students can challenge presumptions, take into account different viewpoints, and make well-informed decisions by delving into complex texts, artwork, and historical settings.

• Improving expression and communication

Good education is characterized by effective communication. Humanities studies improve one’s ability to write, speak, and read critically, allowing one to express ideas nuancedly, convincingly, and clearly.

• Cultural heritage preservation

Humanities subjects like literature and art conservation guarantee that human civilization is preserved for coming generations. Societies can comprehend the development of human expression and preserve a close relationship to their historical heritage by studying ancient writings, artifacts, and creative works.

Using the key points above you can compose an importance of humanities in our lives essay and the importance of studying humanities essay.

Tips for writing a humanity essay

• Write an outline

Before you start writing your essay, you should write an outline. Writing an outline helps to properly plan and organize your ideas for the essay. In the outline, you should write the key points of the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. Once you begin writing the essay, use the outline as a guide.

• Come up with a strong thesis statement

The thesis statement describes the main purpose of the essay. It should be able to show the reader what your essay entails. For an argumentative essay, the thesis statement should be your stance in the argument while for an expository essay, the thesis statement should be the essay’s key idea.

• Use the correct structure

When writing your essay, you should use the correct humanities essay structure. This ensures there is a flow of information throughout your essay. You should start with the introduction describing what your essay will entail, write the body paragraphs that describe the theme of the essay in-depth, and complete with a conclusion which is a summary of the whole essay.

• Use proper transition words

When transitioning from one paragraph to the next, you should use proper transition words. You should always have a unique idea for each paragraph and if one paragraph has the same idea as the next you should use proper transition words. Examples of transition words include ‘additionally’, ‘therefore’, or ‘however’. Using transition words provides a consistent flow of information throughout your essay.

• Cite all the sources

When writing humanities essays, you conduct research from different academic sources such as books, articles, journals, or internet blogs. You should properly cite all the sources used in your essay. When citing the sources, you should use the writing format instructed to use in your essay.

• Follow all the instructions

When writing your essay, you should follow all the given instructions. This includes the word count and the writing format. You should avoid plagiarism and write an original paper. Plagiarized essays can be easily detected and you can get harsh academic repercussions for that.

• Proofread the essay

You should proofread the humanity essay severally to omit any mistakes. Proofreading also helps you to check if your work is properly organized. In addition, you can also run your essay on Grammarly to remove any missed mistakes.

Humanities topics ideas

Below are the humanities topics for the essay:

• Importance of human rights
• Social changes in third-world countries
• Causes of interstate conflicts
• Eradication of worldwide poverty
• Importance of preservation of historical facts
• Ethical issues in the society
• Ways to fight corruption in developed countries
• Benefits and disadvantages of early marriages
• The role of the judicial system
• Effects of racism

The above are a few humanities research paper topics you can use for your humanities papers. When choosing a topic, you should choose a topic that you are interested in and can write a good essay about it.

Writing a humanity essay requires you to choose a topic, do research, and compose a well-structured essay. This article gives you a guide on how to write a humanity essay. If you need help with your humanity essay, we provide professional help with essays .

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• Essay on Social Studies

Humanities Essay Sample

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Social Studies , Life , World , Education , Humanities , Students , Study , Human

Published: 04/01/2020

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Humanities, as a subject, that deals with the quality or condition of being a human. It is the study of the innumerable ways in which human beings, from every period of history and every corner of the world, process and document their experiences. Since the old days, humans have used literature, philosophy; art, music and religion to record and understand the world. All these subjects fall under the umbrella of humanities; therefore, the data of these records of personal experiences give humanity and individuals the opportunity to unite with those who came before us, that is, our ancestors, as well as contemporaries.

It is important to study humanities because it helps in creating meaning and purpose in life, overcoming diversity and communicating effectively. Ultimately, the experience for humans to work with each other meaningfully determines the success of people’s enterprises and this ability is honed through studying and understanding social sciences and humanities. For example, students who study engineering and technology need humanities to succeed in life and not only technical information. This is because they need leadership skills, cultural understanding and emotional intelligence. They also need a capacity for a global perspective and strategic decision-making in their career. Not all these skills can be acquired through technical familiarity, but through the study of humanities.

Humanities are also important because even people who hold leadership posts require it in dealing or addressing complex challenges that are interconnected to the world. These challenges vary in the field they are emerging from; therefore, a person needs to be equipped in all areas. Employers are looking for a candidate who understand what is going on earth, and this cannot be learned through technical information, but through the humanities, where a person gets to learn about the diversity in the world.

Humanities are an integral part of human life and every student’s life, even after school because it allows them to fulfill educational and civic responsibilities. This broad subject allows students to become better citizens and provide an insightful understanding into ethical, political, moral and ideological forces. This is because the society requires a successful individual that depends on charity, compassion, civility, altruism and generosity. This subject, therefore, emphasizes and evaluates the importance of good characteristics that will benefit the society. This study helps and allows a person to become familiar with the use of creative ideas that have already been thought of by great minds. These great minds help in innovations and technology that humans use today. For example, biology, history and literature offer an opportunity to understand human nature, as well as the society. The three humanities introduce ideas and thoughts outside a person’s interest, and help in critical thinking, and finding new directions in life. Great minds such as those of Charles Darwin helped in the development of the evolution theory. It subsequently helped in the development of humanities in those science students, and people understood the nature of humans.

The study and understanding of humanities have been held to be the most important subjects that any student can be offered in school. This is because it helps a person in acquiring knowledge of foreign cultures and languages. Globalization has increased recently, and there has been an increased need to learn and understand international markets. Understanding overseas markets can only be done through learning other people’s cultures and languages. By so doing, a person can obtain a successful career in the commercial industry. For example, when a person is a clinical nurse, he or she can be sent in any area in the world, and by having knowledge of different languages, he can interact with many people.

The subject of humanities help the individual understand and appreciate the value of the world’s music, literature and art in that by learning all the contents, a student understands and learns about their origin, educational background and other people’s social environment. Music and art are not only in the pictures, but they also speak to many people in various ways, thus transforming them to better persons. For example, music that was sung in the past had many lessons and many inspiring messages. Music also gave people freedom to express their traditions as well as their cultures, especially at a point in time when they had no other means of expression.

Humanities also helps both students and people to understand the impacts of science, medicine and technology on the society and the need for future scientific strategies in the world. For that reason, people are encouraged to learn and understand humanities to enable the world in understanding the need for future science and why it is needed. Therefore, this subject is very important in people’s lives, even after school as they help in the improvement of good communication skills that are necessary even after life after school. For that reason, humanities faculty in colleges and schools should put more resources on the subject and inform students of the future benefits, to help in the increase of humanity in the world.

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UCI Humanities Core

Winter: Essay Assignment 3

Visual analysis of a worldbuilding artwork by a contemporary african american artist.

Downloadable Essay Rubric

Select a work of art by Sanford Biggers, Titus Kaphar, or Carrie Mae Weems using the online resources linked below. Conduct a close visual analysis of the artwork and consult relevant scholarly secondary sources about the artist’s practice and larger oeuvre. Construct an interpretive thesis about the meaning represented by the artwork and provide specific evidence from your close visual analysis and secondary sources in support of your argument. As you develop your ideas and claims, consider the following questions: How do the materiality, composition, and iconography of this artwork create meaning? If the artwork is part of a series, in what way does it relate to the project of the larger whole? Does the artwork remake an earlier object or reimagine a preexisting genre? If so, how and why? In what specific ways does the work of art engage with history and politics? How does the artwork negotiate with the representation and/or lived experiences of Black people? What way of seeing the world does this artwork create?

Your final paper will be between 5–6 pages in length and will be worth 40% of your writing grade.

Learning Goals

• Make specific, complex, arguable claims
• Produce unified, cohesive body paragraphs that contain arguable topic sentences, well-selected and properly-integrated evidence from visual objects and scholarly reference sources, and rhetorically-effective introduction, conclusion, and transitions between ideas
• Adopt the appropriate stance, style, and genre conventions of visual and art historical analysis
• Begin to evaluate scholarly claims, identify scholarly conversations, and integrate secondary source material in writing
• Practice process-oriented writing and learn flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading drafts while also reflecting on the process of writing itself

Required Reading

Before you begin brainstorming for this assignment, make sure you have read the following:

Cooks, Bridget. “What’s Wrong with Museums? African American Artists Review Art History.” Humanities Core Handbook: Worldbuilding 2023–2024 , XanEdu, 2023, pp. 154–67.

Beauchamp, Tamara. “Visual Analysis and Close Looking.” Humanities Core Handbook: Worldbuilding 2023–2024 , XanEdu, 2023, pp. 168–182.

Primary Sources

Sanford Biggers

Sanford Biggers: Work (Note: If this site does not load in your browser, you can view the archived version on Internet Archive . Additional information about specific works can be found in the Checklist in Anderson and Betta’s Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch , pp. 167–9 [ PDF ])

Codeswitch exhibition website from the Rivers Institute

Marianne Boesky Gallery

Titus Kaphar

Kaphar Studio: Work (Note: This site works best on desktop browsers and in a wide browser window.)

Roberts Projects

Gagosian Gallery

Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems: Bodies of Work

Museum of Modern Art

Getty Museum

The Hampton Project at the Williams College Museum of Art

Fraenkel Gallery

The Whitney Museum of American Art

Reference Resources, Scholarly Secondary Sources, and Exhibition Catalogues

UCI Libraries has compiled a guide to resources on African American Art and History specifically for this assignment. For more information on using library resources, review the Humanities Core Library Introduction Tutorial .

The following materials are available online or are in the Course Reserve at UCI Langson Library for two hours at a time. To check out any material on Course Reserve, read the Reserves policy and then visit the Check Out desk at Langson Library .

Andersson, Andrea, and Antonio Sergio Bessa. Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch . The Bronx Museum of the Arts, 2020. [ PDF of excerpts available on Canvas ]

Bernier, Celeste-Marie. Stick to the Skin: African American and Black British Art, 1965-2015 . University of California Press, 2018. [ On reserve at Langson Library N6538.N5 B475 2018 ]

Bey, Dawoud, and Carrie Mae Weems. Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: in Dialogue . Delmonico, 2022. [ On reserve at Langson Library TR645.G73 D39 2022 ]

Biggers, Sanford and Miki Garcia. Sanford Biggers: Moon Medicine . Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, 2010. [ On reserve at Langson Library N6537.B5225 A4 2010 ]

Catlett, Elizabeth, et al. Stargazers: Elizabeth Catlett in Conversation with Sanford Biggers, Carrie Mae Weems, et al. Bronx Museum of the Arts, 2010. [ On reserve at Langson Library N6537.C38 A4 2010 ]

Cooks, Bridget R. Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum . University of Massachusetts Press, 2011. [ On reserve at Langson Library N510.C67 2011 ]

Cooks, Bridget R. “Intricate Illusion.” Titus Kaphar: Classical Disruption . Friedman Benda, 2011, pp. 5-40. [ PDF ]

Cooks, Bridget R., and Sarah Watson, editors. The Black Index . Hunter College Art Galleries, 2021. [ On reserve at Langson Library N8217.B535 B53 2021 ]

Delmez, Kathryn E. Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video . Frist Center for the Visual Arts, 2012. [ On reserve at Langson Library TR647.W383 2012 ]

English, Darby, et al. Among Others: Blackness at MoMA . The Museum of Modern Art, 2019. [ On reserve at Langson Library N8232.E55 2019 ]

Feldman, Zeena, editor. Art and the Politics of Visibility: Contesting the Global, Local and the in-Between . I.B. Tauris, 2017. [ Online and on reserve at Langson Library NX180.S6 A78 2017 ]

Jacob, Mary Jane. Carrie Mae Weems . Fabric Workshop/Museum, 1994. [ On reserve at Langson Library N6537.W344 A4 1994 ]

Kaphar, Titus. “A Fight for Remembrance.” The Georgia Review , vol. 69, no. 2, 2015, pp. 199–208. JSTOR , http://www.jstor.org/stable/44077632 .

Kaphar, Titus, and Jason Stanley. “Titus Kaphar.” BOMB , no. 147, 2019, pp. 81–88. JSTOR , https://www.jstor.org/stable/26876294 .

Lewis, Sarah Elizabeth, editor. Carrie Mae Weems . The MIT Press, 2020. [ On reserve at Langson Library TR187.C375 2020 ]

Lewis, Sarah Elizabeth. “The Insistent Reveal: Louis Agassiz, Joseph T. Zealy, Carrie Mae Weems, and the Politics of Undress in the Photography of Racial Science.” To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes , edited by Ilisa Barbash, et al., Aperture, 2020, pp. 297-328 [ PDF ]

Millstein, Barbara Head. Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers . Brooklyn Museum of Art in association with Merrell, 2001. [ On reserve at Langson Library TR645.N532 B7 2001 ]

Patterson, Vivian, et al. Carrie Mae Weems: The Hampton Project . Aperture, 2000. [ On reserve at Langson Library TR647.W54 2000 ]

Rothenberg, Ellen and Carrie Mae Weems. Telling Histories: Installations by Ellen Rothenberg and Carrie Mae Weems . University of Washington Press, 1999. [ On reserve at Langson Library N6537.A6284 A4 1999 ]

Weems, Carrie Mae. And 22 Million Very Tired and Very Angry People . Walter/McBean Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute, 1992. [ On reserve at Langson Library TR647.W375 1992 ]

Weems, Carrie Mae. Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment . Savannah College of Art and Design, 2008. [ On reserve at Langson Library TR647.W443 2008 ]

Weems, Carrie Mae, et al. Carrie Mae Weems: The Louisiana Project . Newcomb Art Gallery, 2004. [ On reserve at Langson Library TR645.W54 W384 2004 ]

Weems, Carrie Mae. Then What? Photographs and Folklore . CEPA Gallery, 1990. [ On reserve at Langson Library TR647.W415 1990 ]

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Essay on Humanity

500 words essay on humanity.

When we say humanity, we can look at it from a lot of different perspectives. One of the most common ways of understanding is that it is a value of kindness and compassion towards other beings. If you look back at history, you will find many acts of cruelty by humans but at the same time, there are also numerous acts of humanity. An essay on humanity will take us through its meaning and importance.

Importance of Humanity

As humans are progressing as a human race into the future, the true essence of humanity is being corrupted slowly. It is essential to remember that the acts of humanity must not have any kind of personal gain behind them like fame, money or power.

The world we live in today is divided by borders but the reach we can have is limitless. We are lucky enough to have the freedom to travel anywhere and experience anything we wish for. A lot of nations fight constantly to acquire land which results in the loss of many innocent lives.

Similarly, other humanitarian crisis like the ones in Yemen, Syria, Myanmar and more costs the lives of more than millions of people. The situation is not resolving anytime soon, thus we need humanity for this.

Most importantly, humanity does not just limit to humans but also caring for the environment and every living being. We must all come together to show true humanity and help out other humans, animals and our environment to heal and prosper.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

The Great Humanitarians

There are many great humanitarians who live among us and also in history. To name a few, we had Mother Teresa , Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Princess Diana and more. These are just a few of the names which almost everyone knows.

Mother Teresa was a woman who devoted her entire life to serving the poor and needy from a nation. Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian poet who truly believed in humanity and considered it his true religion.

Similarly, Nelson Mandela was a great humanitarian who worked all his life for those in needs. He never discriminated against any person on the basis of colour, sex, creed or anything.

Further, Mahatma Gandhi serves as a great example of devoting his life to free his country and serve his fellow countrymen. He died serving the country and working for the betterment of his nation. Thus, we must all take inspiration from such great people.

The acts and ways of these great humanitarians serve as a great example for us now to do better in our life. We must all indulge in acts of giving back and coming to help those in need. All in all, humanity arises from selfless acts of compassion.

Conclusion of the Essay on Humanity

As technology and capitalism are evolving at a faster rate in this era, we must all spread humanity wherever possible. When we start practising humanity, we can tackle many big problems like global warming, pollution , extinction of animals and more.

FAQ of Essay on Humanity

Question 1: What is the importance of humanity?

Answer 1: Humanity refers to caring for and helping others whenever and wherever possible. It means helping others at times when they need that help the most. It is important as it helps us forget our selfish interests at times when others need our help.

Question 2: How do we show humanity?

Answer 2: All of us are capable of showing humanity. It can be through acknowledging that human beings are equal, regardless of gender, sex, skin colour or anything. We must all model genuine empathy and show gratitude to each other and express respect and humility.

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1.8: An Introduction to the Arts and Humanities

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For centuries, scholars, philosophers, and aestheticians have debated over a definition of "art." The challenging range of arguments encompasses, among other considerations, opposing points of view that insist on one hand that "art" must meet a criterion of functionality-that is, be of some societal use-and, on the other hand, that "art" exists for its own sake. In this text, we survey rather than dispute. Thus, in these pages, we will not solve the dilemma of art's definition. For example, we might define "art" as one person's interpretation of reality manifested in a particular medium and shared with others. Such a definition, while agreeable to some, finds objection from others for various reasons, among which is the fact that it is completely open­ ended and does not speak to quality. It allows anything to qualify as "art" from the simplest expression of art brut, naive art, or "outsider art" such as drawings by children or psychotics to the most profound masterpiece. Such are the tantalizing possibilities for disagreement when we try to define art. We can however examine some characteristics of the arts that enhance our understanding.

Art has always had, a profound effect on the quality of human life, as the pages of this reading will help us to understand. Its study requires seriousness of purpose. But, we must not confuse seriousness of purpose in the study of art with putting works of art on a pedestal. Some art is serious, some art is profound, and some art is highly sacred. However, some art is light, some humorous, and some downright silly, superficial, and self-serving for the artists. But eventually, we will desire to make judgments and once again the text will help sort out the details.

THE ARTS AND WAYS OF KNOWING

We humans are creative species. Whether in science, politics, business, technology, or the arts, we depend upon our creativity almost as much as anything else to meet the demands of daily life. Any study of the arts comprises a story about us; our perceptions of the world as we have come to see and respond to it and the ways we have communicated our understandings to each other since the Ice Age, more than 15,000 years ago.

Photography of Lascaux animal painting from Wikimedia Commons by Prof saxx . Public domain

We have learned a great deal about our world and how it functions since the human species began and we have changed our patterns of existence. However, the fundamental characteristic that makes us human -that is, our ability to intuit and to symbolize- have not changed. Art, the major remaining evidence we have of our earliest times, reflects these unchanged human characteristics in inescapable terms and helps us to understand the beliefs of culture including our own and to express the universal qualities of being human.

Visual art, architecture, music, theatre, dance, literature, and cinema, among other artforms, belong in a broad category of pursuit called the "Humanities." The terms arts and humanities fit together as a piece to a whole. The “Humanities” as a discipline constitutes a larger whole into which the arts fit as one piece. So, when we use the term Humanities, we automatically include the arts. When we use the term arts, we restrict our focus. The arts disciplines- the visual arts, the performing arts, and architecture (including landscape architecture)- typically arrange sound, color, form, movement, and/or other elements in a manner that affects our sense of beauty in a graphic or plastic (capable of being shaped) medium. The humanities include the arts but also include disciplines such as philosophy, literature, and sometimes, history, which comprise branches of knowledge that share a concern with humans and their cultures. We begin our discussion with a look at the humanities.

The Humanities-as opposed to the sciences, for example- can very broadly be defined as those aspects of culture that look into what it means to be human. The sciences seek essentially to describe reality whereas the humanities seek to express humankind's sub­ jective experiences of reality, to interpret reality, to transform our interior experience into tangible forms, and to comment upon reality, to judge and evaluate. But despite our desire to categorize, few clear boundaries exist between the humanities and the sciences. The basic difference lies in the approach that separates investigation of the natural universe, technology, and social science from the search for truth about the universe undertaken by artists.

Within the educational system, the humanities traditionally have included the fine arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, music, theatre, dance, and cinema), literature, philosophy, and, sometimes, history. These subjects orient toward exploring humanness, what human beings think and feel, what motivates their actions and shapes their thoughts. Many answers lie in the millions of artworks all around the globe, from the earliest sculpted fertility figures to the video and cyber art of today. These artifacts and images comprise expressions of the humanities, not merely illustrations of past or present ways of life.

In addition, change in the arts differs from change in the sciences, for example, in one significant way: New scientific discovery and technology usually displace the old, but new art does not invalidate earlier human expression. Obviously, not all artistic approaches survive, but the art of Picasso cannot make the art of Rembrandt a curiosity of history the way that the theories of Einstein did the views of William Paley. Nonetheless, much about art has changed over the centuries. Using a spectrum developed by Susan Lacy in Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art (1994), we learn that at one time an artist may be an experiencer , at another, a reporter , at another, an analyst ; and at still another time, an activist . Further, the nature of how art historians see art has changed over the centuries summit- for example, today, we do not use an artist’s biography to justify all of the motivation for his or her work- and we now include works of art from previously marginalized groups such as women and minorities. These shifts in the disciplines of the arts suggest important considerations as we begin to understand the nature of art.

Most importantly, we can approach works of art with the same subtleties we normally apply to human relationships. We know that we cannot simply categorize people as "good " or "bad," as "friends," "acquaintances," or "enemies." We relate to other people in complex ways. Some friendships remain pleasant but superficial, some people are easy to work with, and others become lifelong companions. Also, making a good friend takes time and repeated meetings and shared activities. This is also true of making friends with a painting, or a sculpture or, a ballet. So, when we have gone beyond textbook categories and learned how to approach art with this sort of openness and sensitivity, we find that art, like friendship, has a major place in the growth and quality of life.

THE CONCERNS OF ART

Among other concerns, art has typically con­cerned creativity, aesthetic communication, symbols, and the fine and applied arts. Let's look briefly at each of these.

Art has always evidenced a concern for creativity-that is, the act of bringing forth new forces and forms. We do not know for sure how creativity functions. Nonetheless, some­thing happens in which humankind takes chaos, formlessness, vagueness, and the un­known and crystallizes them into form, design, inventions, and ideas. Creativity underlies our existence. It allows scientists to intuit a pos­sible path to a cure for cancer, for example, or to invent a computer. The same process allows artists to find new ways to express ideas through processes in which creative action, thought, material, and technique combine in a medium to create something new, and that "new thing," often without words, triggers human experience-that is, our response to the artwork.

AESTHETIC COMMUNICATION

Art usually involves communication. Argu­ably, artists need other people with whom they can share their perceptions. When artworks and humans interact, many possibilities exist. Interaction may be casual and fleeting, as in the first meeting of two people, when neither wishes a relationship. Similarly, an artist may not have much to say, or may not say it very well. For example, a poorly written or produced play will probably not excite an audience. Similarly, if an audience member's preoccupa­tions render it impossible to perceive what the play offers, then at least that part of the artistic experience fizzles. On the other hand, all con­ditions may be optimum, and a profoundly exciting and meaningful experience may occur: The play may treat a significant subject in a unique manner, the production artists' skills in manipulating the medium may be excellent, and the audience may be recep­tive. Or the interaction may fall somewhere between these two extremes.

Throughout history, artistic communication has involved aesthetics (ehs-THEH­tihks). Aesthetics is the study of the nature of beauty and of art and comprises one of the five classical fields of philosophical inquiry-along with epistemology (the nature and origin of knowledge), ethics (the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by the individual in relationship with others), logic (the principles of reasoning), and metaphysics (the nature of first principles and problems of ultimate reality). The term aesthetics (from the Greek for "sense perception") was coined by the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762) in the mid-eighteenth century, but interest in what constitutes the beauti­ful and in the relationship between art and nature goes back at least to the ancient Greeks. Plato saw art as imitation and beauty as the expression of a universal quality. For the Greeks, the concept of "art" embraced all handcrafts, and the rules of symmetry, proportion, and unity applied equally to weaving, pottery, poetry, and sculpture. In the late eighteenth century, the philosopher Immanuel Kant (kahnt; 1724-1804) revolutionized aesthetics in his Critique of Judgment (1790) by viewing aesthetic appreciation not simply as the perception of intrinsic beauty, but as involving a judgment-subjective, but informed. Since Kant, the primary focus of aesthetics has shifted from the consideration of beauty per se to the nature of the artist, the role of art, and the relationship between the viewer and the work of art.

Art also concerns symbols. Symbols usually involve tangible emblems of something ab­stract: a mundane object evoking a higher realm. Symbols differ from signs, which suggest a fact or condition. Signs are what they indicate. Symbols carry deeper, wider, and richer meanings. Look at the Greek cross below. A Greek Cross has arms of equal length and was one of the most common Christian forms used in the 4th century. Some people might identify this figure as a plus sign in arithmetic. But as a Greek cross, it becomes a symbol because it suggests many images, meanings, and implications. Artworks use a variety of symbols, and symbols make artworks into doorways leading to enriched meaning.

Greek Cross Public Domain

Symbols occur in literature, art, and ritual. Symbols can involve conventional relationships such as a rose standing for courtly love in a medieval romance. A symbol can suggest physical or other similarities between the symbol and its reference (the red rose as a symbol for blood) or personal associations-for example, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats's use of the rose to sym­bolize death, ideal perfection, Ireland, and so on. Symbols also occur in linguistics as arbitrary symbols and in psychoanalysis where symbols, particularly images in dreams, sug­gest repressed, subconscious desires and fears. In Judaism, the contents of the feast table and the ceremony performed at the Jewish Passover seder (a feast celebrating the exodus from slavery in Egypt) symbolize events surrounding the Israelites' deliverance from Egypt. In Cluistian art, the lamb, for example, symbolizes the sacrifice of Christ.

FINE AND APPLIED ART

One last consideration in understanding art's concerns involves the difference between fine art and applied art. The " fine arts "- generally meaning painting, sculpture, architecture, music, theatre, dance, and in the twentieth century, cinema- are prized for their purely aesthetic qualities. During the Renaissance (roughly the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries), these arts rose to superior status because Renaissance values lauded individual expression and unique aesthetic interpreta­tions of ideas. The term “ applied art” sometimes includes architecture and the " decorative arts " and refers to art forms that have a primarily decorative rather than expressive or emotional purpose. The decorative arts in­clude handcrafts by skilled artisans, such as ornamental work in metal, stone, wood, and glass, as well as textiles, pottery, and bookbind­ing. The term may also encompass aspects of interior design. In addition, personal objects such as jewelry, weaponry, tools, and costumes represent the decorative arts. The term may expand, as well, to mechanical appliances and oilier products of industrial design. None­theless, even the most common of objects can have artistic flair and provide pleasure and interest. The lowly juice extractor (see below), an example of industrial design, brings a sense of pleasantry to a rather mundane chore. Its two-part body sits on colored rubber feet and reminds us, perhaps, of a robot. Its cream and brown colors are soft and warm, comfortable rather than cold and utilitarian. Its plumpness holds a friendly humor, and we could imagine talking to this little device as an amicable companion rather than regarding it as a mere machine. The term decorative art first appeared in 1791. Many decorative arts, such as weaving, basketry, or pottery, are also commonly considered "crafts," but the definitions of the terms remain somewhat arbitrary and without sharp distinction.

Braun Juice Extractor-"Multipress" available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication .

Quilt art exhibit installation view, International Quilt Study Center & Museum, University of Nebraska – Lincoln CC BY-SA 3.0

THE PURPOSES AND FUNCTIONS OF ART

Another way we can expand our under­standing of art involves examining some of its purposes and functions. In terms of the former-- that is, art's purposes-- we ask, What does art do? In terms of the latter-- that is, art's functions-- we ask, How does it do it? Among some of art’s purposes, art can: (1) provide a record; (2) give visible or other form to feelings; (3) reveal metaphysical or spiri­tual truths; and ( 4) help people see the world in new or innovative ways. Art can do any or all of these. They are not mutually exclusive.

Until the invention of the camera, one of art's principal purposes involved enacting a record of the world. Although we cannot know for sure, very likely cave art of the earliest times did this. And so it went through history. Artists undertook to record their times on vases, walls, canvases, and so on-as in the case of the eighteenth-century Ital­ian painter Canaletto (can-ah-LAY-toh), in highly naturalistic verdute (vair-DOO-tay; Italian for "views") that he sold to travelers doing the grand tour of Europe.

Canaletto - Rialto Bridge from the North Public Domain

Art can also give visible form to feelings. Perhaps the most explicit example of this aspect of art comes in the Expressionist style of the early twentieth century. Here the artist's feelings and emotions toward content formed a primary role in the work.

Edvard Munch, 1893, The Scream , oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, 91 x 73 cm, National Gallery of Norway Public Domain

In terms of art that reveals metaphysical or spiritual truths, we can turn to the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe, whose light and space perfectly embodied medieval spirituality. The rising line of the cathedral reaches, ultimately, to the point of the spire, which symbolizes the release of earthly space into the unknown space of heaven.

Cologne Cathedral towers CC BY-SA 3.0 de

On the other hand, a tribal ancestor figure deals almost exclusively in spiritual and metaphysical revelation.

Totem pole in Vancouver, British Columbia CC BY-SA 4.0

Finally, most art, if well done, can assist us in seeing the world around us in new and surprising ways. Art that has no representational content may reveal a new way of understanding the inter­action of life forces.

In addition to its purposes-what it does--­ art also has many functions; in other words, how it does what it does. This includes (1) enjoyment, (2) political and social commentary, (3) ther­apy, and (4) artifact. Again, one function is no more important than the others. Nor are they mutually exclusive; one artwork may fill many functions. Nor are the four functions just mentioned the only ones. Rather, they serve as indicators of how art has functioned in the past and can function in the present. Like the types and styles of art that have occurred through history, these four functions and oth­ers provide options for artists and depend on what artists wish to do with their artworks.

Works of art can provide an escape from everyday cares, treat us to a pleasant experience, and engage us in social occasions. The same artworks we enjoy may also create in­sights into human experience. We can also glimpse the conditions of other cultures, and we can find healing therapy in enjoyment. An artwork in which one individual finds only enjoyment may function as a profound social and personal comment to another. In the case of a Chinese landscape like Walking by a Mountain Stream , it may raise a plain feature of nature to a profound level of beauty.

Landscape Lu Han; 1699; ink and color on paper donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art .

Albert Bierstadt - Among the Sierra Nevada, California Public Domain

Art may have a political or social function, such as influencing the behavior of large groups of people. It has functioned this way in the past and continues to do so. Eugene Delacroix's (deh-lah-KWAH) painting, Liberty Leading the People (July 28, 1830), illustrates this concept. In July 1830, for three days known as the Trois Glorieuses (the Glorious Three), the people of Paris took up arms to bring in the parliamentary monarchy of Louis-Philippe in hopes of restoring the French Republic. Eager to celebrate July 28, Delacroix painted the allegorical figure of Liberty waving the tricolor flag of France and storming the corpse-ridden barricades with a young combatant at her side. The painting was reviled by conservatives but purchased by Louis-Philippe in 1831. Soon after, it was hidden for fear of inciting public unrest.

Liberty Leading the People Eugene Delacroix Public Domain

The ancient Greek playwright Aristo­phanes (air-ih-STAH-fuh-neez) used comedy in such plays as The Birds to attack the political ideas of the leaders of ancient Athenian society. In Lysistrata , he attacked war by creating a story in which all the women of Athens go on a sex strike until Athens rids itself of war and warmongers. In nineteenth-century Norway, playwright Henrik Ibsen used An Enemy of the People as a platform for airing the issue of whether a government should ignore pollution in order to maintain economic well-being. In the United States today, many artworks act as vehicles to advance social and political causes, or to sensitize viewers, listeners, or readers to particular cultural situations like racial prejudice and gender equality.

Graffiti from a wall in Bethlehem, Israel. This photograph taken by Pawel Ryszawa This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International , 3.0 Unported , 2.5 Generic , 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

We Have No Property! We Have No Wives! No Children! We Have No City! No Country! — Petition of Many Slaves, 1773 (painted in 1955 ) Panel 5 of Jacob Lawrence’s series “Struggle… From the History of the American People,”

In a therapeutic function, creating and experiencing works of art may address indi­viduals with a variety of illnesses, both physical and mental. Role-playing, for example, used frequently as a counseling tool in treating dysfunctional family situations, often called psychodrama, has mentally ill patients act out their personal circumstances in order to find and cure the cause of their illness. Here the individual forms the focus. However, art in a much broader context acts as a healing agent for society's general illnesses as well. In hopes of saving us from disaster, artists use artworks to illustrate the failings and excesses of society. In still another vein, the laughter caused by comedy releases endorphins, chemicals produced by the brain, which strengthen the immune system.

Art also functions as an artifact: As a product of a particular time and place, an artwork represents the ideas and technology of that specific time and place. Artworks often provide not only striking examples but occasionally the only tangible records of some peoples. Artifacts, like paintings, sculptures, poems, plays, and buildings, enhance our insights into many cultures, including our own. Consider, for example, the many revelations we find in a sophisticated work like the cast vessel below from Igbo-Ukwu (IGH­boh OOK-woo). This artifact from the village of Igbo-Ukwu in eastern Nigeria utilizes the cire perdue (sihr pair-DOO) or "lost wax" process and reveals great virtuosity. It tells us much about the vision and technical accomplishment of this ninth- and tenth-century African society.

Bronze ceremonial vessel in form of a snail shell, 9th century, Igbo-Ukwu, Nigeria CC BY-SA 3.0

The Igbo-Ukwu vessel, as exemplary of art in a context of cultural artifact, raises the issue of religious ritual. Music, for example, when part of a religious ceremony, has a ritual function but the same musical piece performed in concert comprises a work of art. And theatre- if seen as an occasion planned and intended for presentation- would include religious rituals as well as events that take place in theatres. Often, as a survey of art history would confirm, we cannot discern when ritual stops, and secular production starts. For example, ancient Greek tragedy seems clearly to have evolved from and maintained ritualistic practices. When ritual, planned and intended for presentation, uses traditionally artistic media like music, dance, and theatre, we can legitimately study ritual as art, and see it also as an artifact of its particular culture.

Having said all that about purposes and functions, we must also state that sometimes art just exists for its own sake. In the late nineteenth century, a philosophical artistic movement occurred called aestheticism, characterized by the slogan " art for art's sake ." Those who championed this cause reacted against Victorian notions that a work of art must have uplifting, educational, or otherwise socially or morally beneficial characteristics. Proponents of aestheticism held that artworks stand independent and self-justifying, with no reason for being other than being beautiful. The playwright Oscar Wilde said in defense of this viewpoint: "All art is quite useless." His statement meant that exquisite style and polished device had greater importance than utility and meaning. Thus, form is victorious over function. The aesthetes, as proponents of aestheticism were called, disdained the "natural," organic, and homely in art and life and viewed art as the pursuit of perfect beauty and life a quest for sublime experience.

The question of how we go about approaching the arts, or how we study them, presents another challenge. We must choose one of the several methods available and carry on from there. We assume those most of you who are taking this course have had only limited exposure to the arts. So, we have chosen a method of study that can act as a spring­board into the arts--it seems logical to begin our study by dealing with some concrete characteristics. In other words, from mostly an intellectual point of view, what can we see and what can we describe when we look at the arts?

To put that question in different terms, how can we sharpen our aesthetic perception?

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What Do Students at Elite Colleges Really Want?

Many of Harvard’s Generation Z say “sellout” is not an insult.

Credit... Jeff Hinchee

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By Francesca Mari

• Published May 22, 2024 Updated May 24, 2024

The meme was an image of a head with “I need to get rich” slapped across it. “Freshmen after spending 0.02 seconds on campus,” read the caption, posted in 2023 to the anonymous messaging app Sidechat.

The campus in question was Harvard, where, at a wood-paneled dining hall last year, two juniors explained how to assess a fellow undergraduate’s earning potential. It’s easy, they said, as we ate mussels, beets and sautéed chard: You can tell by who’s getting a bulge bracket internship.

“What?” Benny Goldman, a then-28-year-old economics P.h.D. student and their residential tutor, was confused.

One of the students paused, surprised that he was unfamiliar with the term: A bulge bracket bank, like Goldman Sachs , JPMorgan Chase or Citi. The biggest, most prestigious global investment banks. A B.B., her friend explained. Not to be confused with M.B.B. , which stands for three of the most prestigious management consulting firms: McKinsey, Bain and Boston Consulting Group.

While the main image of elite campuses during this commencement season might be activists in kaffiyehs pitching tents on electric green lawns, most students on campus are focused not on protesting the war in Gaza, but on what will come after graduation.

Despite the popular image of this generation — that of Greta Thunberg and the Parkland activists — as one driven by idealism, GenZ students at these schools appear to be strikingly corporate-minded. Even when they arrive at college wanting something very different, an increasing number of students at elite universities seek the imprimatur of employment by a powerful firm and “making a bag” (slang for a sack of money) as quickly as possible.

Elite universities have always been major feeders into finance and consulting, and students have always wanted to make money. According to the annual American Freshman Survey , the biggest increase in students wanting to become “very well off financially” happened between the 1970s and 1980s, and it’s been creeping up since then.

But in the last five years, faculty and administrators say, the pull of these industries has become supercharged. In an age of astronomical housing costs, high tuition and inequality, students and their parents increasingly see college as a means to a lucrative job, more than a place to explore.

A ‘Herd Mentality’

At Harvard, a graduating senior, who passed on a full scholarship to another school, told me that he felt immense pressure to show his parents that their $400,000 investment in his Harvard education would allow him to get the sort of job where he could make a million dollars a year. Upon graduation, he will join the private equity firm Blackstone, where, he believes, he will learn and achieve more in six years than 30 years in a public-service-oriented organization.

Another student, from Uruguay, who spent his second summer in a row practicing case studies in preparation for management consulting internship interviews, told me that everyone arrived on campus hoping to change the world. But what they learn at Harvard, he said, is that actually doing anything meaningful is too hard. People give up on their dreams, he told me, and decide they might as well make money. Someone else told me it was common at parties to hear their peers say they just want to sell out.

“There’s definitely a herd mentality,” Joshua Parker, a 21-year-old Harvard junior from Oahu, said. “If you’re not doing finance or tech, it can feel like you’re doing something wrong.”

As a freshman, he planned to major in environmental engineering. As a sophomore, he switched to economics, joining five of his six roommates. One of those roommates told me that he hoped to run a hedge fund by the time he was in his 30s. Before that, he wanted to earn a good salary, which he defined as $500,000 a year.

According to a Harvard Crimson survey of Harvard Seniors, the share of 2024 graduates going into finance and consulting is 34 percent. (In 2022 and 2023 it exceeded 40 percent. The official Harvard Institutional Research survey yields lower percentages for those fields than the Crimson survey, because it includes students who aren’t entering the work force.)

These statistics approach the previous highs in 2007, after which the global financial crisis drove the share down to a recent low of 20 percent in 2009, from which it’s been regaining ground since.

Fifteen years ago, fewer students went into tech. Adding in that sector, the share of graduates starting what some students non-disparagingly refer to as “sellout jobs” is more than half. (It was a record-shattering 60 percent in 2022 and nearly 54 percent in 2023.)

“When people say ‘selling out,’ I mean, obviously, there’s some implicit judgment there,” said Aden Barton, a 23-year-old Harvard senior who wrote an opinion column for the student newspaper headlined, “How Harvard Careerism Killed the Classroom.”

“But it really is just almost a descriptive term at this point for people pursuing certain career paths,” he continued. “I’m not trying to denigrate anybody’s career path nor my own.” (He interned at a hedge fund last summer.)

David Halek, director of employer relations at Yale’s Office of Career Strategy, thinks students may use the term “sell out” because of the perceived certainty: “It’s the easy path to follow. It is well defined,” he said.

“It’s hard to conceptualize other things,” said Andy Wang, a social studies concentrator at Harvard who recently graduated.

Some students talk about turning to a different career later on, after they’ve made enough money. “Nowadays, English concentrators often say they’re going into finance or management consulting for a couple of years before writing their novel,” said James Wood, a Harvard professor of the practice of literary criticism.

And a surprising number of students explain their desire for a corporate job by drawing on the ethos of effective altruism : Whether they are conscious of the movement or not, they believe they can have greater impact by maximizing earnings to donate to a cause than working for that cause.

But once students board the prestige escalator and become accustomed to a certain salary, walking away can feel funny. Like, well, walking off an escalator.

Financial Pressures

The change is striking to those who have been in academia for years, and not just at Harvard.

Roger Woolsey, executive director of the career center at Union College, a private liberal arts college in Schenectady, N.Y, said he first noticed a change around 2015, with students who had been in high school during the Great Recession and who therefore prioritized financial security.

“The students saw what their parents went through, and the parents saw what happened to themselves,” he said. “You couple that with college tuition continuing to rise,” he continued, and students started looking for monetary payoffs right after graduation.

Sara Lazenby, an institutional policy analyst for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that might be why students and their parents were much more focused on professional outcomes than they used to be. “In the past few years,” she said, “I’ve seen a higher level of interest in this first-destination data” — stats on what jobs graduates are getting out of college.

“Twenty years ago, an ‘introduction to investment banking’ event was held at the undergraduate library at Harvard,” said Howard Gardner, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “Forty students showed up, all men, and when asked to define ‘investment banking,’ none raised their hands.”

Now, according to Goldman Sachs, the bank had six times as many applicants this year for summer internships as it did 10 years ago, and was 20 percent more selective for this summer’s class than it was last year. JPMorgan also saw a record number of undergraduate applications for internships and full-time positions this year.

The director of the Mignone Center for Career Success at Harvard, Manny Contomanolis, also chalked up the change, in part, to financial pressure. “Harvard is more diverse than ever before,” Mr. Contomanolis said, with nearly one in five students eligible for a low-income Pell Grant . Those students, he said, weigh whether to, for instance, “take a job back in my border town community in Texas and make a big impact in a kind of public service sense” or get a job with “a salary that would be life changing for my family.”

However, according to The Harvard Crimson’s senior survey, as Mr. Barton noted in his opinion column, “The aggregate rate of ‘selling out’ is about the same — around 60 percent — for all income brackets.” The main distinction is that students from low-income families are comparatively more likely to go into technology than finance.

In other words, there is something additional at play, which Mr. Barton argues has to do with the nature of prestige. “If you tell me you’re working at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, that’s amazing , their eyes are going to light up,” Mr. Barton said. “If you tell somebody, ‘Oh, I took this random nonprofit job,’ or even a journalism job, even if you’re going to a huge name, it’s going to be a little bit of a question mark.”

Maibritt Henkel, a 21-year-old junior at Harvard, is an economics major with moral reservations about banking and consulting. Ms. Henkel sometimes worries that others might misread her decision not to go into those industries as evidence that she couldn’t hack it.

“Even if you don’t want to do it for the rest of your life, it’s seen kind of as the golden standard of a smart, hardworking person,” she said.

Some students have also become skeptical about traditional avenues of social change, like government and nonprofits, which have attracted fewer Harvard students since the pandemic, according to the Harvard Office of Institutional Research.

Matine Khalighi, 22, founded a nonprofit to award scholarships to homeless youth when he was in eighth grade. When he began studying economics at Harvard, his nonprofit, EEqual, was granting 50 scholarships a year. But some of the corporations that funded EEqual were contributing to inequality that created homelessness, he said. Philanthropy wasn’t the solution for systemic change, he decided. Instead, he turned to finance, with the idea that the sector could marshal capital quickly for social impact.

Employers encourage this way of thinking. “We often talk about the fact that we work with some of the biggest emitters on the planet because we believe that’s how we actually affect climate change,” said Blair Ciesil, the global leader of talent attraction at McKinsey.

The Recruitment Ratchet

Princeton’s senior survey results are nearly identical to The Crimson’s Senior Survey: about 38 percent of 2023 graduates who were employed took jobs in finance and consulting; adding tech and engineering, the rate is close to 60 percent, compared with 53 percent in 2016, the earliest year for which the data is available.

This isn’t solely an Ivy League phenomenon. Schools slice their data differently, but at many colleges, a large percentage of students pursue these fields. At Amherst , in 2022, 32 percent of employed undergrads went into finance and consulting, and 11 percent went into internet and software, for a total of about 43 percent. Between 2017 and 2019, the University of California, Los Angeles, sent about 21 percent of employed students into engineering and computer science, 9 percent into consulting and nearly 10 percent into finance, for a total of roughly 40 percent

Part of that has to do with recruitment; the most prestigious banks and consulting firms do so only at certain colleges, and they have intensified their presence on those campuses in recent years. Over the last five years or so, “the idea of thinking about your professional path has moved much earlier in the undergraduate experience,” Ms. Ciesil said. She said the banks first began talking to students earlier, and it was the entrance of Big Tech onto the scene, asking for junior summer applications by the end of sophomore year, that accelerated recruitment timelines.

“At first, we tried to fight back by saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no, sophomores aren’t ready, and what does a sophomore know about financial modeling?’” said Mr. Woolsey at Union College. But, he added, schools “don’t want to push back too much, because then you’re going to lose revenue,” since firms often pay to recruit on campus.

The Effective Altruist Influence

The marker that really distinguishes Gen Z is how pessimistic its members are, and how much they feel like life is beyond their control, according to Jean Twenge, a psychologist who analyzed data from national surveys of high school students and first-year college students in her book “Generations.”

Money, of course, helps give people a sense of control. And because of income inequality, “there’s this idea that you either make it or you don’t, so you better make it,” Ms. Twenge said.

Mihir Desai, a professor at Harvard’s business and law schools, wrote a 2017 essay in The Crimson titled “ The Trouble With Optionality ,” arguing that students who habitually pursue the security of prestigious employment foreclose the risk-taking and longer-range thinking necessary for more unusual or idealistic achievements. Mr. Desai believes that’s often because they are responding to the bigger picture, like threats to workers from artificial intelligence, and political and financial upheaval.

In recent years, he’s observed two trends among students pursuing wealth. There’s “the option-buyer,” the student who takes a job in finance or consulting to buy more time or to keep options open. Then there’s what he calls “the lottery ticket buyer,” the students who go all-in on a risky venture, like a start-up or new technology, hoping to make a windfall.

“They know people who bought Bitcoin at $2,000. They know people who bought Tesla at $20,” he said.

Some faculty see the influence of effective altruism among this generation: In the last five years, Roosevelt Montás, a senior lecturer at Columbia University and the former director of its Center for the Core Curriculum, has noticed a new trend when he asks students in his American Political Thought classes to consider their future.

“Almost every discussion, someone will come in and say, ‘Well, I can go and make a lot of money and do more good with that money than I could by doing some kind of charitable or service profession,’” Mr. Montás said. “It’s there constantly — a way of justifying a career that is organized around making money.”

Mr. Desai said all of this logic goes, “‘Make the bag so you can do good in the world, make the bag so you can go into retirement, make the bag so you can then go do what you really want to do.’”

But this “really underestimates how important work is to people’s lives,” he said. “What it gets wrong is, you spend 15 years at the hedge fund, you’re going to be a different person. You don’t just go work and make a lot of money, you go work and you become a different person.”

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