The four-year undergraduate program of study in humanities is designed to prepare professional musicians for a full life as cultured citizens.
All students in the undergraduate degree program are required to take 24 credits (voice students, 21) distributed among humanities core and elective classes.
The humanities program is designed to ensure that students achieve the following goals:
- Develop skills of critical and creative thinking, effective speaking and writing
- Learn to analyze and interpret literary works, using textual evidence in support of oral and written arguments
- Explore important issues presented by culturally significant texts ranging across genres, disciplines, and historical periods
- Appreciate the workings of the literary imagination and recognize its capacity to enhance individual creativity
- Understand the pivotal events, celebrity figures, central ideas and defining worldviews that have shaped major episode in cultural history, thereby enriching the context for their musical studies and gaining insight into the tradition in which they are participating
- Make connections between literature and their own lives as artists and individuals in an effort to develop a viable personal philosophy
Core Seminars focus on foundational texts and key issues relevant to artistic and personal development. Advanced electives allow teachers to draw upon their fields of expertise in multicultural interdisciplinary courses that combine music, art, and literature.
Specific courses and degree sequence plans can be found in the Course Catalog.
Humanities Department Handbook
The Humanities Department Handbook provides essential information that will enable students to streamline their progress through the humanities program at Manhattan School of Music. Included here are descriptions of humanities core seminars, humanities lectures, and humanities electives; a designation of the humanities requirements for international students; sections describing options for independent study and tutoring; and instructions on how to secure transfer credit for college courses taken at other schools. We hope that by accessing this handbook you are able to familiarize yourself with what the humanities program offers at Manhattan School of Music and thereby better understand the ways in which the study of the humanities can enrich your lives as creative artists.
Department Chair
Delano Copprue
