Humanities Division
Inspiring new paths to the future by building on deep knowledge of our past.
At the UC Santa Cruz Humanities Division, our students and faculty are re-imagining the future in the classroom and in the world. They dive deeply into the meaning, context, and expressive power of images and words. They study the past in order to situate the present. Students and faculty work together on the central questions of our collective social project: What are our ethical responsibilities to ourselves, to others, and to the planet? What is the meaning of justice? What are the implications of modern technology on human society? Those questions and deep thinking equip Humanities students as writers, researchers, collaborators, and advocates who can boldly reimagine what the world can and should be. Our students go on to become lawyers, technologists, educators, scholars, changemakers, and so much more.
Our departments’ majors and programs prepare graduates extraordinarily well for lives and careers of contribution, meaning, and success. Through experiential learning initiatives such as Employing Humanities, students are pursuing internships and placements in community-based organizations where their skills—writing, persuasion, and creative and critical thinking—are put to productive use.
The Humanities Institute is a dynamic hub for bold research projects that tackle pressing questions, including artificial and human intelligence, the environment and natural world, digital and public history, and community-engaged scholarship. Our research centers bring together faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates around issues of public significance and connect academic research and ideas with a broader public.
“At a time when we urgently need to reframe our national discussion about the place of the humanities in higher education, the momentum and creative energy in the UC Santa Cruz Humanities Division is real and heartening. The development of critical thinking and imagination is essential not only for understanding the trends, issues, and crises of our time but for actively shaping a more just and sustainable world.”
— Jasmine Alinder, Dean of Humanities and History Professor
With your support we will:
Build upon the Humanities Division’s rich tradition of vanguard scholarship that reaches beyond disciplinary boundaries—enabling the production of cutting-edge research within and across History, Literature, Languages, Linguistics, and Philosophy, while also fostering newer arrangements of interdisciplinarity, such as History of Consciousness and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. We will seed new partnerships to expand the reach of humanities scholarship, and to develop its capacity to challenge and inform discussion on the most urgent issues of our time—including how systemic factors reinforce disparities, how to forge partnerships with communities outside academia, and how to understand the boundaries between people and the world we inhabit.
Create collaborative partnerships to explore how the humanities provide important perspectives across many disciplines and issues. The Humanities Institute is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary force across the university, seeding innovative scholarship, initiating interdisciplinary connections, and building ties across the Santa Cruz region and beyond. Support for The Humanities Institute will sustain its mission to support research excellence, to equip students to succeed inside and outside academia, and to build rich community connections in the region and across California.
Empower students by helping them build the skills that are important to modern employers through the Employing Humanities program. Experiential Learning allows students to apply their learning—creative thinking, cultural awareness, and writing—outside the classroom through internships, research projects, community-engaged courses, study-immersion, and other forms of experiential learning. These experiences transform students’ educational, personal, and career growth. Participating organizations and companies value Humanities students’ skills in critical thinking, technology, data analytics, and communication skills. We envision that every Humanities student has at least one paid experiential learning opportunity before they graduate.
The Employing Humanities program also creates opportunities for non-Humanities majors to benefit from the skills and habits of mind that the Humanities cultivate. Even in the age of Artificial Intelligence, the capacity to write clearly, persuasively, and creatively is among the skills that employers tell us they are looking for most in new graduates. Currently, UC Santa Cruz does not have a campus-wide writing center. Support for a new Writing Collaboratory will expand efforts to create a culture of writing on our campus to help every UC Santa Cruz student improve their writing for professional, academic, and creative purposes across diverse media.
Support for the Humanities Division will:
Faculty support helps the division attract and retain leading scholars whose work shapes our understanding of culture, history, language, and society. We are seeking funding for chairs, professorships, center directorships, and postdoctoral fellowships.
Student support ensures that talented students from all backgrounds can pursue a humanities education and prepare for meaningful, impactful careers. We seek funding for scholarships, graduate fellowships, and degree-defining experiences through Employing Humanities.
Programmatic support advances new research, public engagement, and curricular innovation across the humanities.
The Dean’s Innovation Fund provides flexible support for emerging opportunities, including interdisciplinary partnerships, student support, research, and creative initiatives.
Humanities Division Departments
- CRITICAL RACE AND ETHNIC STUDIES
- HISTORY
- HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- LANGUAGES AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS
- LINGUISTICS
- LITERATURE
- PHILOSOPHY
- WRITING PROGRAM
Research Units
- CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES
- CENTER FOR JEWISH STUDIES
- CENTER FOR MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
- CENTER FOR RACIAL JUSTICE
- CENTER FOR SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES
- DICKENS PROJECT
- SHAKESPEARE WORKSHOP
- THE HUMANITIES INSTITUTE