Humanities York University

Overview

As we move through the 21st century, a century in which we witness astounding technological and scientific progress driven by an ever-changing global economy, why engage in a study of the Humanities at York University? How can our lives be enriched by interdisciplinary research in the Humanities? 

Interdisciplinary perspectives have the potential to reshape debates and raise new questions. There is a vitality to the current scholarship in the Humanities which enlivens all contemporary thinking and helps us to understand the complexity of human culture.

Course Details

The Humanities MA program at York University is different from other graduate programs, both disciplinary and interdisciplinary, because its main focus will be to examine subjects central to the Humanities within a wide diversity of interdisciplinary approaches and within a rich diversity of cultural, including multicultural, contexts. Though the disciplines have over the years become more interdisciplinary, and though graduate programs based on disciplines within the humanities have become more interdisciplinary as a result, the Humanities Program will be distinctive in its explicit focus on interdisciplinarity scholarship in practice and in theory.

Humanities is a program of study whose very basis is the dynamic interaction between text and context in historical and comparative perspective, and whose methodology is explicitly and systematically interdisciplinary. It thus draws upon the interdisciplinary interests and approaches of much contemporary scholarship which is increasingly informed by general theoretical frameworks and issues that cannot be contained within the bounds of conventional disciplines. Within these broad dimensions, the Graduate Program in Humanities addresses critical issues involving western and non-western humanist traditions in contexts that are both historical and contemporary. The program's mandate is to produce graduates equipped to utilize the rich tools afforded by interdisciplinary scholarship in humanities within a broad range of pursuits not only within a university setting but also outside it.

Stream and Specializations: 

• Comparative perspectives and cultural boundaries
• Religion, values and culture
• Science, technology and culture