Humanities

Man stands on stage and performs during a theatre play.

 

 

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.

 


News from Humanities

CINEMA STUDIES, MATHEMATICS - Abby Lewis, a fourth-year mathematics and cinema studies major, hopes to address the divide between mathematics vs. arts students in her second children’s book, Moose and the Math Fairy, earlier this year. “Math is in patterns, and it’s all around us in the world," Lewis said.
ROMANCE LANGUAGES, WOMEN'S AND GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES - Oregon Ducks come from all over the world, including the Basque Country, a small region carved out of northern Spain on the border with France. Meet Nagore Sedano Neveira and learn about her life's journey that brought her to University of Oregon.
DISABILITY STUDIES, JUDAIC STUDIES - Students who come to CAS seeking a degree often find something even greater: themselves. Discover how an identity-focused major or minor can lead to a fulfilling career.

All news »

We Love Our Supporters

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Your Gift Changes Lives

Gifts to the College of Arts and Sciences can help our students make the most of their college careers. To do this, CAS needs your support. Your contributions help us ensure that teaching, research, advising, mentoring, and support services are fully available to every student. Thank you!

Give to CAS

World-Class Faculty in the Humanities

headshot of Stephen Shoemaker

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).

Portrait image of Stacy Alaimo

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

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. 

Paris, France cityscape at night

School of Global Studies and Languages

At the School of Global Studies and Languages (GSL), 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.

Explore the GSL

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.

Explore Other Majors and Minors in the College of Arts and Sciences

 

Meet our Dean

The departments and programs of the Humanities Division share a commitment to the study of human experience as it is expressed in diverse languages and cultures throughout history and across the world. A Humanities education encourages students to think creatively, independently, and critically about the human past, present, and future. Whether they choose to focus on cinema, classical languages, or philosophical ideas, Humanities students learn to reason, to build arguments, to write and communicate with confidence and conviction, and to view the world and its challenges from multiple perspectives.

Our College of Arts and Sciences is committed to providing students with a genuine liberal arts education, which means that we strive to expose students to more than one way of knowing. We want our students to appreciate the profound differences—and the no-less profound similarities—in the way a philosopher, a biologist, and a political scientist approach the same questions about the human condition. The unique lens provided by the Humanities departments and programs at UO is an essential part of that liberal arts education, which we believe prepares students to live meaningful lives in the world.

Harry Wonham   
Divisional Associate Dean, Humanities

harry wonham

Happening at CAS

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

UO College of Arts & Sciences (@uocas) • Instagram photos and videos

Oct 15
Department of History Coffee Hour 10:00 a.m.

Please join us Tuesday mornings for a free cup of coffee, pastries, and conversation with your history department community! We’re excited to continue this tradition...
Department of History Coffee Hour
October 8–December 3
10:00–11:00 a.m.
McKenzie Hall 335

Please join us Tuesday mornings for a free cup of coffee, pastries, and conversation with your history department community! We’re excited to continue this tradition for our history undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. We hope to see you there!

Oct 15
Disabled and Neurodivergent Graduate Student Time Together 11:00 a.m.

Meets Week 3 in person and Week 7 online each term First meeting in person Tuesday, October 15 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon Graduate Student Lounge, Susan Campbell...
Disabled and Neurodivergent Graduate Student Time Together
October 15
11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Susan Campbell Hall 111 - Graduate Student Lounge

Meets Week 3 in person and Week 7 online each term

First meeting in person

Tuesday, October 15 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon Graduate Student Lounge, Susan Campbell Hall, Room 111 RSVP

This event is co-sponsored by the Accessible Education Center and the Division of Graduate Studies.

Oct 15
The Roots of Polarization: From the Racial Realignment to the Culture Wars noon

A Morse Bookmarks event featuring Neil O'Brian, assistant professor of political science at UO.  In the late twentieth century, gay rights, immigration, gun control,...
The Roots of Polarization: From the Racial Realignment to the Culture Wars
October 15
noon
William W. Knight Law Center 110

A Morse Bookmarks event featuring Neil O'Brian, assistant professor of political science at UO. 

In the late twentieth century, gay rights, immigration, gun control, and abortion debates all burst onto the political scene, scrambling the parties and polarizing the electorate. Neil A. O’Brian traces the origins of today’s political divide on these issues to the 1960s when Democrats and Republicans split over civil rights. It was this partisan polarization over race, he argues, that subsequently shaped partisan fault lines on other culture war issues that persist to this day.

Neil O’Brian is an academic expert in U.S. politics with focus on public opinion, political parties and polarization. In May 2024, he was named a 2024 Andrew Carnegie Fellow

Oct 15
How to Be Ready for the Graduate Student & Postdoc Industry Recruitment Event (GSPIRE) 2:00 p.m.

Attending the Graduate Student & Postdoc Recruitment Event (GSPIRE)? Are you not too familiar with a virtual career fair and how it works on Handshake, specifically? Join...
How to Be Ready for the Graduate Student & Postdoc Industry Recruitment Event (GSPIRE)
October 15
2:00–3:00 p.m.
This is a virtual event.

Attending the Graduate Student & Postdoc Recruitment Event (GSPIRE)? Are you not too familiar with a virtual career fair and how it works on Handshake, specifically? Join gradCAREERS to learn how to put your best foot forward - before, during and after this, and any, virtual fair!

Attending a virtual career fair will give you an edge in landing that next job or internship. Academic and research institutions, organizations and companies who will attend this fair and all future ones want to hire UO graduate students and postdoctoral scholars —and they’ll host virtual sessions to find the students they want to interview. If you are a graduate student or postdoc scholar, register now for this free zoom session!