The University of North Carolina at Asheville requires all students to take four humanities courses that examine accomplishments from the past thousands of years of history, but some people don’t find it necessary to their education, said Humanities Professor Grant Hardy, Ph.D.
“I think when people think humanities, they probably do think of history and literature and philosophy and art. There may sometimes be confusion when people associate that with creative things like, ‘Oh, you’re going to write poetry or you’re going to write stories or make art,’ which is certainly part of the humanities program and in majors people do that,” Hardy said.
He said that humanities also incorporates critical thinking when analyzing artistic, historical or literary sources.
“Let’s analyze it and see where it comes from and what parts fit together and such,’” Hardy said.
He said critical thinking is applied when looking at art and literature because it requires evaluation and reasoning before judgments can be made.
“When it comes to humanities, it exemplifies questions such as, ‘Is this good? Is this bad? Why is that? How’s the author doing it? Are they leaving things out?’” Hardy said.
UNCA senior Zo Newton said the depth humanities reaches and the intentions behind its requirements, and humanities’ critical thinking skills go beyond dissecting historical pieces.
“It’s good to understand what people mean by universal topics, not only because it’s good to know what tracks with a lot of different groups of people but also because there’s actually no such thing as a universal topic,” Newton said.
She said it’s good to have different experiences from varying perspectives, which allows people to expand the way they think.
Hardy said creative thinking plays a role in gaining students’ interest in humanities, too.
“There’s the creative element and then there’s sort of the interpretive critical element. I think students don’t always have those two things in mind,” he said.
Newton said she has completed all four required humanities courses and is majoring in creative writing, which allows for her to understand how humanities is applicable in creative fields. She said if faculty members truly intend to educate their students, they will also incorporate other relevant fields into their lessons to give students different perspectives and personal connections to form and create interest.
“When I’m working through a project, I have to look at it through a lot of different lenses and ask a lot of different questions,” she said. “I feel like the only way you make history interesting to somebody is to make it personal, to show them something that actually matters to them.”
According to Hardy, critical thinking bleeds into creative imagination in all courses and career paths.
“I think we probably do that more in humanities where we’ll read something and then we’ll say, ‘So what was the person who made this thinking? What was their life like? What kind of worries did they have? What kind of values did they have?’ So it’s this thinking yourself into a very different life thousands of years ago in a different language in a different place and I like that sort of creative thinking. It’s not just being critical of things but it’s also trying to imagine what life was like for people long ago and far away,” Hardy said.
Mass Communication Lecturer Stephanie O’Brien, Ph.D., said she uses a lot of critical thinking skills and humanities in her creative field.
“So I’m thinking about this TV show,” O’Brien said, referencing her poster of “The Shield” leaning on her bookshelf. “I’ve got, like, 10 police cars. I’m out on the streets of Los Angeles. I’ve got five main actors. I’ve got 10 extra police officers. I’ve got 50 background people – people that are running around and I’ve gotta chase going through the streets of downtown. And I’ve got shoot-outs, and I’ve got all this going on. That is all critical thinking and it’s been broken down earlier on paper but now we’re taking it on the day and we’re filming it.”
She said working in the industry is like a puzzle because people have allotted time off, scenes aren’t shot in order and timing is never perfect for production days. It’s all about picking the production apart and putting it back together in a way that makes sense.
The importance of knowing history prevents it from being repeated but in humanities, UNCA sophomore Madeline Hamuka said history teaches people where things came from and how they’ve come to be. She said it is not necessarily to prevent repeating the exact offense of historical events. It informs people of the decisions that were made in the past and how it led to certain past occurrences.
“It changes the way we look at the world now. You could find some sort of thing or certain culture talked about in humanities and how learning about that influences the way that things happen now,” Hamuka said.
When it comes down to why students should care about the history of anything — whether it be in a humanities class or in a future career path – O’Brien said she has empathy for the students’ misconception of the subject’s usefulness.
“It may seem more like history because that’s how it’s divided up (into historical periods) instead of maybe thematically. It’s by dates, but those dates are important because you’re looking at the development of things, so I think that could be part of it. Maybe it’s a marketing and communication aspect of what the classes’ purposes are and what students are understanding that to be.”
She said even in the film industry she familiarized herself with for almost two decades how it may not seem like it at the time but there are connections between ancient times and how it replays today.
“I just think that people don’t realize it unless they take the time to really sit down and think about it,” O’Brien said about having to read film theory when she went back to school for her master’s degree. “You realize how much they (production crew) do rely on history and all the people that came before them that they’re emulating or that inspired them. I think that we really have to sit down and think about it and realize the connections that are there. And I think in a fast-paced world, we don’t do that.”