Integrated Humanities

The Humanities Department has embarked on a bold schoolwide adventure to integrate the study of literature, history, religion, art, music, architecture, film and dance in a four-year sequence: Ancient Studies, World Studies, European Studies and American Studies.

English and history teachers team-teach these courses, along with the school's music teacher and other guest lecturers. Students who complete the four-year sequence will receive half credits for both history of art and history of music.

One representative unit is the Jazz Age Unit in American Studies. In this unit, students read “The Great Gatsby;” study the history, art and music of the 1920s; learn to dance the Charleston, dress up as flappers, visit the Grove Park Inn (where F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald frequently stayed) and write an integrated research paper tying all of these experiences together.

With such multifaceted units, we hope to develop students' imaginations and creativity as well as their ability to think and write clearly using specific and compelling evidence.

"They combine English and history into almost one class, so when we're reading 'Julius Caesar,' we're studying ancient Roman history, and when we're reading 'The Odyssey' in English, we're studying ancient Greece in history. Everything is correlated perfectly. I really like the experience."

David Schaffer, Class of 2010