In Humanities, you will engage in critical and analytical study of primary works such as literature, historical documents, cultural artifacts and documentation, as well as critical engagement with secondary or scholarly approaches to these objects and their fields. Areas of study include ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, English, religion, art and visual and performing arts such as music and theater.
Humanities emphasizes library research skills, from careful and deep reading to using digital resources of all kinds. Humanities students generally work extensively in the library or on the library website to develop fine-tuned search skills. They are also likely to earn advanced degrees, from the Ph.D., J.D. or MFA, to library degrees including the Master of Science in Information Sciences and Master of Library Science. Our graduate placement record with nationally-ranked programs is excellent, and our graduates have worked in the Library of Congress, Hollins University and public libraries.
Language Placement Exam Information: New College offers an online placement exam in Spanish, French and German in order to place students in the appropriate class. Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Russian do not use the online placement exam; faculty in those areas can provide you with more information. Once you are admitted to New College, you will be able to access detailed information on language placement exams through our community portal, myNCF. Faculty will confirm your placement after you arrive in August through some combination of questionnaires, writing samples and individual conversations.
Areas of study include ancient and modern languages, Literature, Philosophy, English, Religion, Art, and visual and performing arts such as Music and Theater.
New College’s language instruction program is top-notch. Students who have come here with little to no language other than English have gone on to do advanced graduate work in the literature of that language, to work in careers where they use their language skills, and to live and teach abroad. Although still quite new, our Chinese Language and Literature program is growing by leaps and bounds, with many of our students studying abroad in China — a true cultural immersion and enrichment to classroom study. The College has a Language Resource Center designed to provide resources and support to language students and faculty, including audio-visual and print resources, language software and games.
The Division of Humanities offers the following areas of concentration (AOC):
Art
Art History
Chinese Language and Culture
Classics
English
French Language or French Studies
German Studies/German Language & Literature
Humanities
Literature
Music
Philosophy
Religion
Russian Language and Literature
Spanish Language and Literature
As you can imagine in a program as far-reaching as the Humanities, the career paths chosen by our graduates are boundless.
Many pursue graduate school to earn master’s degrees, Ph.D.’s, J.D.’s and other advanced and professional degrees. And they go on to become teachers, writers, librarians, researchers, museum curators, international aid workers, photographers, web developers, consultants, entrepreneurs and lawyers.
In short, they excel in any field where critical thinking, creativity, and advanced communication and analytic skills are valued.
Carol Flint ’76 is a Hollywood scriptwriter and producer. Over the last two decades, she has regularly written and produced episodes for such acclaimed and successful television shows as “China Beach,” “L.A. Law,” “ER” and “The West Wing,” all shows for which she received Emmy nominations. After sharing in ER’s Emmy win for “Outstanding Drama Series,” Flint both wrote and produced the long-running TV drama’s 1997 season premiere. The much-publicized episode was broadcast live — a TV genre thought to be extinct. More recently, she has produced and written for “Royal Pains,” “Six Degrees” and “The Unit.”
Charles Choi is a freelance science reporter with bylines in The New York Times, Scientific American, Wired magazine and LiveScience.com with regular syndication on MSNBC, Fox News, USA Today and the Christian Science Monitor. He graduated from New College in Humanities and Biology.
Cynthia Gray is an engineer at the Walt Disney World Corporation.
Anita Allen is vice provost for faculty, Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and a professor of philosophy at University of Pennsylvania. In 2010, she was appointed by President Obama to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. She has worked at Georgetown and Carnegie Mellon, and has been a visiting professor at Yale, Harvard, Villanova, Princeton, Arizona, Hofstra and Johns Hopkins. She traces much of the good life she enjoys today as a law professor, wife and mother to “a healthy preoccupation with excellence fostered by New College.” She went on to obtain a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan and a law degree from Harvard.
Justin Clarke-Doane studied Philosophy and Mathematics at New College and is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University in NYC. He is also an Honorary Research Associate at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and a Birmingham Fellow at the University of Birmingham in the UK. His work concerns metaphysical and epistemological problems surrounding traditionally a priori domains such as logic, mathematics, modality and morality. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from New York University.
Kevin Unrath is principal librarian in at the New York Public Library in Middleton. Previously he was a librarian at Hollins University.
Melissa Renee Waggenspack is communications manager at Johnson & Johnson. Formerly, she was a publicist with Columbia University Press and Oxford University Press.
Karen Fraivillig, who completed a special program AOC in British Literature and History, is Assistant State Attorney and regularly prosecutes high-level criminal cases on the Sarasota Circuit.
Andrew Hossack, a former New York City Teaching Fellow, teaches fourth grade for gifted and talented students at William T. Harris School in New York.
“Matter’-ing’ the Body Strategies of Resistance in Contemporary Art” by Aria Alamalhodaei
“Deleuze’s Cinematic Imperative: An Ethico-Politics of Belief in this World” by Jonathan Amos
“In Site Out: Placing Emancipatory Practice in Installation and Site-Specific Work” by Katelyn Bobek
“The Modernization of Buddhism In Taiwan: A Case Study of Tzu Chi and Fo Guang Shan” by Rafaela Calatchi
“Another Verse: An Experiment in Interactive/Digital Poetics” by Michael Floering
“Happiness Is Divine: A Case for the Divinity of the Truly Happy Person of Plotinus’s Enneads” by Arthur Larcinese Krieger
“This Impossible Object: On the Class Struggle, Althusser, and Why Every Anti-Communist is a Dog” by Alec Niedenthal
“Existence and Resistance: A Heideggerian Reading of Foucault’s “Ethical Turn”” by Bill Yanelli
“Recognition in Relational Autonomy” by Rachel Tohn
“The Positive Value of Death: A Reevaluation of Suicide and Self-Sacrifice” by Erin Dyles
“‘A Maneuvering Business’: Courtship, Family, and Marriage in Novels of Manners (Burney, Austen, Edgeworth)” by Adella Irizarry
“A New Multimedia Edition of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera” by William Mayo
“Annihilation, Negation, and Revelation: Deconstructive Trauma and the Mysterious/Unknown in the Works of Emily Dickinson and Flannery O’Connor” by Megan Kathleen Pinckney
“Between ‘Scylla and Charybdis’: Navigating through Ulysses” by Hunter Felt
“Fearing the Future: The Uncanny Child and Modern Children’s Literature by L. Frank Baum, Neil Gaiman, and J. K. Rowling” by Sean Marlow
“Form or Fascism?: Exploring Genre and Innovation in Three Nontraditional Sonnet Sequences” by Kathleen DeBolt
“Jazz Poetry: The American Idiom” by Isabel Maioriello-Gallus
Built around a central courtyard, the Mildred Sainer Fine Arts Complex is the heart of music, sculpture and the fine arts on campus. The 257-seat auditorium is used for music, theater and dance performances by students and visiting artists.
The art and sculpture buildings include a printmaking studio-arts lab with Apple computers and peripherals, plus woodworking and welding shops. Music students have access to the latest computer technology and software.
The Black Box Theater is a flexible space that seats approximately 50 people and has its own control booth for sound and lighting.
Movable stage platforms make it possible to adapt the space in a number of configurations, from seating in the round to conventional theater-style. Partial funding for the Black Box Theater has been provided by a grant from the William G. and Marie Selby Foundation.