The departments and programs of the Humanities Division are committed to the study of human meaning as it is expressed in diverse languages, explained in diverse literatures, and reflected upon from diverse philosophical and religious perspectives. Students seek to understand the values and purposes that make practices and systems worthwhile. In an increasingly interconnected world, the ability to critically consider how individuals and communities make sense of their world is an essential skill. Explore majors, minors, concentrations, and academic programs in the humanities.
American English Institute
Arabic Studies
Chinese
Cinema Studies
Classical Civilization
Classics
Comparative Literature
Creative Writing
Comics and Cartoon Studies
Digital Humanities
Disability Studies
English
Environmental Humanities
News from Humanities
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World-Class Faculty in the Humanities
Stephen Shoemaker
Professor of Religious Studies
Stephen Shoemaker teaches courses about Christian traditions and is a prolific contributor to research related to ancient and early medieval Christian traditions in early Byzantine and Near Eastern Christianity.
Shoemaker has received research fellowships over the years and received two in 2024 to complete the translation of the earliest surviving Christian hymnal from sixth-century Jerusalem, which is in Old Georgian. The fellowships include one from the National Endowment for the Humanities for 2024–2025 and a Senior Fellowship funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation).
He recently published The Quest of the Historical Muhammad and Other Studies on Formative Islam (2024) and is the co-author of The Capture of Jerusalem by the Persians in 614 CE (2024).
Stacey Alaimo
Professor of English
Stacey Alaimo’s research explores the intersections between literary, artistic, political, and philosophical approaches to environmentalism. She has published three books and more than 60 scholarly articles, on such topics as toxins, gender and climate change, environmental justice, queer animals, Anthropocene feminisms, marine science studies, the blue humanities, and new materialist theory.
Her concept of trans-corporeality has been widely taken up in the arts, humanities and sciences. She has been interviewed many times in print and podcasts. Her work has been translated into at least 12 languages and has inspired several art exhibitions.
Her fourth book, The Abyss Stares Back: Encounters with Deep Sea Life (2025), explores the science and aesthetics of deep-sea creatures since the 1930s. Alaimo currently serves as the English department’s director of graduate studies and is a core faculty member in the Environmental Studies Program.
Lowell Bowditch
Professor of Classics
Lowell Bowditch is the head of the Department of Classics. Her research explores the interface between the literature and socio-political relations of Augustan Rome.
Her newest project addresses issues of free speech and censorship in the early imperial age. She explores this through the work of Ovid in the context of the growing authoritarianism of the Augustan regime, with the planned book to draw comparisons with the contemporary political landscape.
Her previous work focused on love elegy and Roman imperialism from postcolonial perspectives. Along with multiple articles and research papers, she is the author of two books and a commentary, including the most recent, Roman Love Elegy and the Eros of Empire (London and New York 2023).
Bowditch came to the UO in 1993 and particularly enjoys mentoring classics undergraduates and master’s students.
Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages
At the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages (SGSL), UO students engage with diverse cultures, languages, histories, and lifeways across the world. Students of the humanities, from Cinema Studies to Religious Studies, will broaden and deepen their education in their field by viewing it—and experiencing it—through a global lens. GSL prepares our graduates for life after college with an interdisciplinary curriculum, innovative language teaching, abundant learning opportunities outside the classroom, and paths of study that lead to many options for real-world careers.
Research in the Humanities
Inquiry in humanities fields centers around our collective human experience. Our stories are told in many forms, be it a script, a screenplay, a religious text, in literature or in folktales. Researchers in the humanities employ tools of analysis to explore the long history and rapidly changing landscape of ideas, values and beliefs that coalesce in a different sort of knowledge about reality and human life.
2024-2025 Sponsored Research in Humanities
Between July 2024 and June 2025, researchers in CAS received $83 million to fund 199 research projects, including $1.5 million for Humanities. The research projects, which span divisions and fields of study, represent CAS's commitment to curiosity, discovery, and innovation.
Explore Other Majors and Minors in the College of Arts and Sciences
Meet our Dean
Welcome to the humanities!
With the human condition as our starting point, and an orientation spanning the past, present, and far into the future, the humanities at the University of Oregon address society’s core human questions of meaning, making, communication, and understanding.
In the College of Arts and Sciences, humanities span disciplinary fields, such as literature and languages, folklore, theatre and cinema, philosophy, classics, and religious studies. Our faculty teach students key humanistic skills such as writing, critical analysis, logical reasoning, translation, and expression. Our programs emphasize the liberal arts through engaged student learning, and our students are trained by the UO’s world-class research faculty to be resilient thinkers, capable of bringing their humanistic insights to bear on a transforming world.
Like any other time of rapid change, whether the Industrial Revolution or the technological revolution, thinkers of the human condition reflect and analyze human experiences and make it possible to share them. Through its many disciplines, the humanities inspire communication, uniting diverse communities in a common path, helping us address some of our most pressing human concerns.
We hope you will explore the humanities at the UO.
Erica Bornstein
Divisional Associate Dean, Humanities
Happening at CAS
3:30–4:30 p.m.
Northwest Native American Language Resource Center.
Role of a steering committee, strategies for recruiting, and how to sustain meaningful engagement.
Participation is on a first come, first served basis. We are capped at 50 participants per workshop.
Register at: https://forms.office.com/r/NjGWyE6sxe
5:30–7:00 p.m.
Black Arms to Hold You Up
Ben Passmore, critically acclaimed, Eisner-nominated and Ignatz Award-winning cartoonist discusses his book, Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance (Pantheon, 2025). Passmore’s work continues the tradition of Ollie Harrington’s critical cartooning and speaks to the ongoing use of comics as a form of truth-telling against white supremacy.
6:00–8:00 p.m.
Take a break from studying and join us for a night of holiday cheer and connection with other students!
Student Panel:
- Nick Batchelder - J.P. Morgan, Summer Analyst
- Nicholas Laureano - Microsoft, Software Engineering Intern
- Taliek Lopez-Duboff - US House of Representatives, Legislative Intern
- Tarek Anthony - OPB, News Intern
Hone your networking skills while making meaningful connections with other ambitious students from diverse backgrounds, and enjoy FREE food and drinks.
Connect@UO is the premier student-run networking organization at the University of Oregon, hosting twice-per-term networking mixers and various pop-up events for all majors. We strive to uplift the community, help students enhance their networking skills, and connect individuals with those they never thought they would meet.
For more information about the event and Connect@UO, visit our Instagram page @connect.uo
Bring a friend and get ready for a great time!
4:00 p.m.
Join the Department of Geography for the Colloquium Series talk with Aurora Roth on “What we (don’t) talk about when we talk about science in Greenland.”
Free and open to the public
Aurora Roth is a PhD candidate at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, working with Dr. Fiamma Straneo. With an interdisciplinary team, they explore the connections between glaciers, ocean, ecosystems, and climate in Greenland’s glacial fjords. She has been part of icy research and education in Alaska, Antarctica, and Greenland for over a decade and is passionate about creating responsive, reflective, and inclusive science that benefits Arctic communities and people.
The fjords of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) are meeting places. They are where freshwater from ice melt meets the salty ocean and where deep, warm, nutrient-rich ocean waters meet glaciers, sustaining ecosystems that Greenlandic communities rely on for hunting and fishing. And now, they are places where Greenlandic hunters and fishers are meeting research boats and cruise ships. In the last decade, research and interest in Greenland has amplified–this has consequences for the kinds of science that is possible and for how Greenlanders respond to international science interest in their home. How are Greenlanders viewing this current moment and what are they asking of foreign scientists who come to do research in Greenland? What are the responsibilities of a scientist, like myself, studying melting ice in Greenland? I’ll share some current research and how our research group is navigating the colonial past and present that all science is embedded in.