East West Humanities | Bachelor's degree | Humanities & Culture | On Campus | 4 years | Hawai'i Pacific University | USA

The major in “East-West Humanities” is a truly interdisciplinary and integrative major that examines human expression, thought and creativity across time and space. Students have the opportunity to bring together courses from a variety of disciplines and connect them under an overarching theme. The major, organized around a core of courses in which students examine classical works, major ideas, and cultural expressions from western, Asian, and indigenous traditions, employs a comparative perspective to the study of the arts and the traditional humanities. In these courses, and especially as part of their capstone experience, students will engage critically with conventional notions of “East-West” and reimagine it not as a polarity, but as a spectrum. Students majoring in East-West Humanities design their own major based on selected classes that focus on the East-West theme. In conjunction with a faculty mentor, they will develop an individualized program of study that explores a specific theme or area of concentration, depending on their area of interest. For example, a student with an interest in Japanese culture might select courses on the literature, arts, theatre, philosophy and religion of that region; one with a passion for theatre could combine courses on classical drama and Shakespeare with acting and directing courses. In a final capstone course during the senior year, students complete an integrative project which connects their leaning about their chosen theme across a variety of disciplines.