Scholarship and teaching in the humanities can sometimes be overly self-referential. Rather than foster citizenship and social engagement, undergraduate literature classes are often limited to exercises in textual interpretation as students learn to compare and contrast formal devices and thematic motifs. The step from analyzing verbal polyphony…

A curriculum design that focuses on the human sciences, the disciplines that concern themselves with the social and individual activities that are distinctively human, would be a better approach than the current separation of the humanities and social sciences. (MSE)

Developments in humanities scholarship are moving in surprisingly congruent directions. Far from competing with proper attention to pedagogy, they provide solid bases for curricular coherence and teaching effectiveness. New integrative themes crossing disciplinary lines in humanities, focusing here on history, can help fulfill several humanities…

Religion and science have become polarized in modern society, a conflict characteristic of the humanities generally. Comparative religion has a place among the other humanities disciplines, since religion and science have a relationship whose roots go to the basis of our cultural tradition. (MSE)

Two recurring themes in nine liberal arts projects are identified: the quest for new constituencies and a new clarification of the meaning of the humanities in the educational process. The role of the NEH in funding, problems in defining the humanities, and interdisciplinary approaches are discussed. (Author/MLW)

Pacific Lutheran's integrated studies program includes eight courses and one seminar, all with "dynamics of change" as the theme. Courses are related to each other in pairs or sequences, each sequence having its own unifying and controlling topic expressed in the particular subjects of each course component. (Author/LBH)

Miami-Dade Community College offers a course called "The Art of Being Human," which uses a text-anthology, study guide, television films, and slide-tape independent study programs. The student taking this introductory course hopefully will be motivated to learn more about humanities in other courses or in self-study. (Author/LBH)

To avoid becoming mere technicians of medicine, future physicians need to understand the human contexts of medical problems. Though courses in the medical humanities tend to range freely, the three disciplines most consistently drawn from are ethics, literature, and history. (Author/MLW)

As a substitute for what he sees as confusion of separate introductory courses in the different areas, the author proposes an interdisciplinary social science-humanities course organized around basic questions about man's individual and group needs and behaviors, group relationships and processes, value systems, and techniques for creating and…

If society wants knowledgeable citizens who happen to value and to need a profession or some way to make a living, then for that society liberal education still has a vital function. The restoration of the humanities to a central position in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Florida is described. (Author/LBH)

Rather than return to a core curriculum that reflects the structures of knowledge and education developed for other contexts and needs, the humanities should create new structures appropriate to the students', culture's, and faculty's needs today, particularly through interdisciplinary collaboration. (MSE)

The School of New Resources is described as a liberal arts program that helps adults enrich their lives by building on their life experiences within a formal learning environment. Core courses culminate in a seminar to integrate or synthesize the educational process and reinforce the humanistic thrust of the program. (Author/MLW)

For liberal education to be successfully integrated into engineering education, engineers must first be convinced that the humanities and arts are important and worthy of respect. In the brief exposure they provide, liberal arts teachers can inspire engineers through their own passion for what they teach. (MSE)

NEXA is a team-taught interdisciplinary, inter-school curriculum devoted to reuniting the sciences and the humanities. The development of the program and the curriculum itself are discussed, including the findings of a formal site-team evaluation. (Author/MLW)

An interdisciplinary program is described that provides a humanistically-oriented education for preprofessional students, particularly those in the health sciences. The program offers new and diverse courses for the humanities student and was instrumental in the establishment of a Center for Science and Culture. (Author/MLW)