What means do we use to understand our world? How do we document our progress and process the encounters in our lives? The humanities is a broad field of study that gives us a glimpse into the past while instructing us on how to apply that insight to our current experience.

Why study humanities at Sewanee?

Sewanee's team-taught, interdisciplinary humanities program will introduce you to the cultural products and practices that have informed the development of Western cultures. Along with critical examination of the West and consideration of what it has meant—and means today—to be human, you’ll refine your writing and speaking skills as well as participate in humanities seminars. Evaluate the implications of historical change over time and approach the study of cultures—both yours and others—in intellectually informed and responsible ways.

A Sampling of Courses

Experience, Expression, and Exchange: Texts and Contexts of the Modern World
Humanities

As a critical introduction to cultural contexts and ideological tensions in the modern world, this interdisciplinary course examines the intersections of literature, the arts, philosophy, and politics to investigate what it means to be modern and how the modern era has reshaped and redefined the human experience. The course will compare literary, visual, and aural texts from different global traditions to unlink the concept of the modern from “the West” in its investigation of how societies have negotiated, registered, and expressed the experience of modernity.

HUMN 106
Experience, Expression, and Exchange: Utopias and Dystopias
Humanities

This course explores how utopian, dystopian, and post-apocalyptic discourse imaginatively engages—and has engaged—cultural and historical challenges. Using approaches related to history, philosophy, literature, political theory, and the visual arts—especially film—this class seeks to ground utopian and dystopian speculation in the historical and cultural circumstances engendering it. Possible texts include works by Rousseau, More, Plato, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Leibniz, Huxley, Orwell, Zamyatin, McCarthy, Burgess, Atwood, Ishiguro, and Ridley Scott.

HUMN 204
Imitation, Quotation, Appropriation, and Genre
Humanities

Imitation, quotation, and appropriation are fundamental creative strategies. Imitation is how you learn your craft, quotation how you demonstrate expertise, and appropriation a strategy, often with political and legal implications. Forms of expression generated in one context and culture are translated and appropriated for new audiences and purposes. This course examines a diverse range of key monuments, texts, and practices, including the theorization of art in the Italian Renaissance, 20th-century feminist retellings of "classic" tales, and the international exchange of plots between the Hollywood Western and Japanese samurai films.

HUMN 217
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Humanities

Programs of Study

Requirements for the Minor in Humanities

Meet some professors

Stephanie L. Batkie
slbatkie@sewanee.edu

Stephanie L. Batkie holds degrees from Northwestern University (a B.A. in comparative literary studies) and the University of Michigan (a Ph.D. in English, Certificate in medieval and early modern studies). Her work focuses on the late medieval period, and she has published on literature written in Middle English, Medieval Latin, and Anglo-Norman. Her current book project, entitled John Gower and the Sound of Politics, finds in the sound of Gower’s poetry an exploration of the relationship between the speaking subject and the political subject. It offers Gower’s vox as a counterargument to current critical assumptions about subjectivity and political agency in the medieval period, and about political writing as a form of activism across historical divides.

Teaching Associate Professor of English, Director of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program
Derek Ettensohn
dmettens@sewanee.edu

Born and raised in Rhode Island, Derek Ettensohn received a B.A. from Haverford College before earning a Ph.D in English at Brown University. His research and teaching interests include the world Anglophone novel, global environmental fiction, and human rights and literature. His current research project examines how the contemporary Anglophone novel contributes to and shapes discussions of globalism and humanitarianism.

Assistant Professor of English, Chair of Humanities
Stephanie McCarter
samccart@sewanee.edu

Stephanie McCarter teaches Greek and Latin courses at all levels as well as courses in translation, and she is active in Sewanee’s interdisciplinary humanities program. Her research centers on the Latin poetry of the early Roman Empire, especially in relation to its philosophical and historical contexts. She also has research and teaching interests in women, gender, and sexuality in Greco-Roman antiquity. She is the author of Horace between Freedom and Slavery: The First Book of Epistles and is currently working on a translation of Horace's Odes and Epodes.

Associate Professor of Classical Languages
Jefferey Thompson
jpthomps@sewanee.edu

Jeffrey Thompson is professor of art history and chair of film studies at Sewanee, where he teaches courses in modern and contemporary art and film history. He received an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University and a Ph.D. in art history from Emory University. He is a specialist in the history of conceptual art in the United States, Europe, and Latin America with other research interests that include the history of photography, pop art, and graffiti focusing on issues related to art media, mass culture, and the politics of display and reception.

Associate Professor of Art History and Department Chair, Director, Interdisciplinary Humanities Program
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Contact

Derek ettensohn
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF english AND DIRECTOR, INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES PROGRAM

dmettens@sewanee.edu
Gailor Hall 15, Ext. 3197

Classical Studies
The archetype of liberal arts education

The roots of Greek and Latin and the power of their mythology helped propel Western civilization. Classics majors at Sewanee benefit from the study of Western civilization’s foundational languages and find that their influence extends to today’s world. From medical terminology and legal language to hard sciences and the English language itself, we are surrounded by the legacy of our intellectual ancestors.

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Writing Center
Sharpen your pencils, sharpen your skills

Need help with a paper? The Writing Center provides you with objective peer support and instruction for writing projects. The student tutors represent a wide range of majors, and they can help you at any stage in the writing process—topic development, rough drafts, final drafts, revisions, etc. They’re basically your cheerleader from brainstorming to final draft.

Write on
Center for speaking & listening
Next stop: eloquence and poise

The Center for Speaking and Listening will be your new favorite resource on campus. Check out this quiet space, use state-of-the-art equipment, and meet tutors ready to watch your speech and give constructive feedback. Design, develop, and practice delivering effective speeches with eloquence and confidence.

Take a look

Dr. Ladygina Returns to Sewanee

4:30 PM

Dr. Yuliya Ladygina will deliver a talk entitled, "Hauntology, Ruins, Macabre, & a Promise of a Brighter Future in Valentyn Vasyanovych's Atlantis (2019)" In her presentation, Dr. Ladygina will share her ongoing research on Valentyn Vasyanovych's internationally acclaimed film Atlantis (2019), which evokes bombed-out postwar Ukraine of 2025, an imagined universe victorious in its war with Russia but left in total societal, economic, and environmental wreckage. Utterly haunted by ruins, unburied dead, and ubiquitous phantoms of repressed pasts and promised but aborted futures, the film offers a sobering representation of highly complex dimensions of Ukraine's post-Soviet and wartime experiences that invites a thorough hauntological consideration. Using Jacques Derrida's critical approach to history and its ability to haunt and thereby influence contemporary society, Dr. Ladygina will position Atlantis as not only a powerful anti-war text but also a pertinent reflection on Ukraine's ongoing struggle to forge a new vision for its political future. Vasyanovych's use of macabre images and aesthetic choices associated with the phenomena known as "ruins port" will be of particular interest in that regard. In her discussion of Vasyanovych's illustrative narrative strategies, Dr. Ladygina will draw on Kate McLoughlin's influential study of literary representations of war and several critical texts dealing with de-industrial representations.

Withcraft and Social Justice: Moving Beyond Capitalism

4:30 PM
Gailor Auditorium

The work of Dr. Clint Jones explores environmentalism, utopian theory, Marxism, and graphic novels, with the goal of developing a post-capitalist concept of the self as belonging to the natural world.  His talk, Witchcraft and Social Justice: Moving Beyond Capitalism is sponsored by the University Lectures Committee, the Humanities Department, and the Sewanee Integrated Program in the Environment.

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