Humanities

Courses in the philosophy program begin with conceptual analysis and the assessment of arguments. Students will be introduced to fundamental issues concerning existence, knowledge, ethics, and the history of ideas, from Ancient Greece to the present.

Fulfilling your G.E. requirements by taking Humanities courses will give you the opportunity to develop a well-rounded humanities education like that offered at Ivy-League Colleges and Universities, U.C. campuses across the state, and private liberal arts colleges. You will study art, philosophy, history, sex, gender, race, and critical theory. The A.A. in Humanities will prepare you for further study at transfer institutions in a variety of humanistic fields including: art history, film studies, gender studies, history, media studies, philosophy, and race/ethnic studies.

As part of the history major, students are required to take courses in American history and world history as well as study the populations of historically underrepresented minorities. Students will have the opportunity to study with professors who specialize in political, economic, cultural, intellectual, and/or social history.

Gender studies courses equip students with a skill set to understand society and issues of inequality and/or to support students interested in social justice activism. Curriculum and assignments engage with topics related to the complex relationships between identities including but not limited to gender, sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, ability, documentation status, and class. These courses are each designed to prepare students to take upper division courses at a transfer institution.

Film and Digital Media studies is an interdisciplinary program that combines film studies Humanities-based courses with Digital Media curriculum in The Arts. This AA degree prepares students for further studies in film, media studies, or related majors (such as Mass Communication or Digital Media Production). By combining the two areas of study, students will acquire contextual knowledge that will enhance media production, as well as vital production skills to support further work in media studies scholarship and criticism.

Ethnic Studies is the study of race and ethnicity with a focus on the experiences of people of color within the United States in history up to the present. By looking at the role played by race and ethnicity in American society, Ethnic Studies provides an important means to examine and contextualize what is happening right now in the United States—and why it is happening. Ethnic Studies explores race and ethnicity as categories of difference and how these categories have they been defined, constructed, and applied in different places and at different times.

Many employers are seeking people who can think critically and express messages clearly in today’s workforce. A Literature and/or Creative Writing major will foster these skills with practice in critical thinking, analysis, expression, and exploration of diverse voices in writing. In Literature, students will gain a foundation in close reading and discussing major themes within novels, poems, plays, speeches, works of non-fiction, and other texts. In Creative Writing, students have the opportunity to study and compose primary texts, building their own portfolio of work.