What are the Humanities Subjects?

When learning the humanities, students study modern and ancient languages, the rise and fall of famous empires, and even the poetry of the era known as Romantic. In general, it covers the topics of human values, history, culture, and literature. During these studies, students improve their critical thinking, writing, and research skills. 

What Do the Humanities Subjects Include?

In essence, the humanities subjects cover everything about society and the human world from a more critical perspective. It includes things, such as philosophy, history, and English to name but a few. As part of studying the humanities, students look at the idea of humanity itself and apply critical methods to allow them to fully comprehend values, culture, morality, history, art, and literature. 

Each of the disciplines studied as part of the humanities requires a different type of method of interpretation. For instance, when looking at history, the historical method is used and this can be divided into areas, such as cultural history, oral history, and quantitative history. In contrast to this, those studying foreign languages and English use textual criticism to be able to correctly interpret sources. Similarly, philosophy applies experimental and conceptual analysis approaches. 

Defining the Humanities

Within college settings, the humanities are broken down into several different majors that are grouped together in the college of arts and sciences. Examples of the subjects that the humanities are often broken down into include the following: religious studies, linguistics, gender studies, english, comparative literature, art history, philosophy, history, foreign languages, drama and music, classics, and ethnic / area studies.

There are some colleges out there that combine the humanities with art majors, such as dance, painting, music, and visual and performing arts. Where this is done, it is known as arts and humanities. 

Some humanities subjects go across the boundary of social sciences. For instance, there are some colleges out there that consider linguistics and history to be a social science rather than part of the humanities. 

Popular Subjects Within the Humanities

Each and every year in the United States of America there is as many as 100,000 students earning college degrees in the humanities. To be one of these, enroll in online humanities courses with Straighter Line and get transferrable credits.

The very latest data shows that there are in excess of 40,000 students studying English literature and language across all the colleges in the country in any given academic year. For foreign languages, the number is 17,000, whereas, for the subject of philosophy, the number is slightly under 10,000. 

Under the humanities umbrella, most students opt for studying ethnic / area studies, foreign languages, philosophy, art history, religious studies, history, and English which Straighterline humanities classes online covers all of.

Skills Gained from Studying the Humanities

There is much more to studying the humanities than simply learning about the work of William Shakespeare or the French Revolution. Students actually gain skills in being able to effectively communicate, in working independently, in teamwork, and in how to interpret information.

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