Engaged Humanities Curriculum
Discover a pathway through your UP education.
The Hub supports the development of engaged humanities courses across UP. By holding summer curricular institutes, hosting networking lunches, and bringing guest speakers and consultants to campus to share expertise, the Hub helps faculty put new ideas for the classroom into practice, whether that's incorporating engaged humanities methods into an existing course, or incubating and piloting brand new courses that connect the humanities to the world.
Students can select from a menu of options to develop their own specialized pathway through their UP education that leverages the practices and mindsets of the humanities in pragmatic, compelling ways.
Key Pathway Courses
Courses that give you a framework for using the humanities to make connections: between academic work and the wider world, and between your educational experience and your life after college.
CAS 310: Engaged Humanities Fundamentals
How can the humanities help us engage significant problems of our era? In this course, students explore how academic work can engage significant and timely issues through humanities approaches that reach beyond the classroom to the wider world in which we live. The goal is for students to develop a background in engaged humanities inquiry and practices that they can use for a publicly-engaged project, either of their own design or as part of an undergraduate research team. Required for participation in the Public Research Fellows.
CAS 313: Engaged Humanities Futures
For every humanities major who's been asked, "What are you going to do with that?", this class is for you! Despite the stereotypes, research and our own anecdotal experience tell us that humanities majors do quite well when it comes to both traditional measures of success (employment and income) and personal fulfillment. This course aims to address the disconnect by creating structured opportunities for students to visualize and articulate how their college experience prepares them for a wide array of meaningful professional and personal paths.
Engaged Humanities Pathway Electives
Courses that allow you to engage the world, work with local practitioners, and learn side-by-side with neighbors.
Humanities in the World Courses
Taught by local professionals who use the humanities in their work, these courses offer students the opportunity to see the liberal arts in action outside the classroom. Currently under development as part of an NEH grant project, these courses will explore fields like non-profit management, philanthropy and social change, and podcasting for the public good.
Engaged Humanities Core X Courses
Build a pathway through your Core curriculum experience by taking Exploration-level courses that use the engaged humanities to connect beyond campus. Examples include CORE 313X: Portland and the Public Imagination, which invites students to explore multiple locally-based topics via humanities practices and experiential civic engagement.
Neighborhood Humanities Courses
A signature initiative of the Hub, these courses bring together UP students and UP neighbors to learn side by side in discussion-based, seminar style classes that explore timely, challenging topics. Supported by a Mellon Foundation grant, these courses offer an intergenerational educational experience that research shows benefits all.
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