CWRU faculty can partner with the Baker-Nord Center to offer general courses in the Humanities (HUMN). To qualify for HUMN status, the courses must be experiential, methodologically interdisciplinary, and designed explicitly to supplement the hundreds of topical courses offered each semester through CWRU’s humanities departments and programs.
Below are a sampling of recent HUMN courses. For additional information on each semester’s course schedule and prerequisites, please consult the Bulletin and the Student Information System (SIS).
HUMN-101: The Humanities Colloquium (1 credit)
The HUMN-101 seminar is offered exclusively to students in the Baker-Nord Scholars program. The colloquium fosters community and devleops independent research skills by introducing the Scholars to the best humanities resources on and around campus. The class places a strong emphasis on experiential learning, providing firsthand interactions with and special access to galleries, collections, archives and events at CWRU and partnering University Circle institutions.
HUMN-201: The Public Humanities (4 credits)
The course explores what the humanities look like *beyond* the walls of a university, including common careers for humanities majors that are research-based but non-academic, such as museum curation, public design, policy and advocacy, public health, and community engagement. Throughout the semester, students will work both individually and collaboratively towards projects that enhance the public humanities in greater Cleveland. Each semester, the topical focus of HUMN-201 changes, mirroring the annual theme of the Cleveland Humanities Festival. Recent CHF themes have included War (2016), Immigration (2017), Health (2018), Nature (2019), Truth (2020), and Identity (2021).
HUMN-212: Interrogating Information (3 credits)
This course teaches students how to navigate the digital world. In the age of oversaturation, we must interrogate information instead of passively receiving it. Digital Literacy skills provide the tools needed to ethically apply information in your life and future career. Throughout the semester, students will create content using tools like Google and Wikipedia, and in the process they will begin to shift from consumers to producers of the information age. This writing culminates in a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, where the class teaches digital writing to other CWRU students and publishes their expertise on the world wide web.
The “Cleveland, Humanities, Collaboration” Sequence
HUMN-224: CHC, Questions and Values (1 credit)
This enrichment seminar explores how a humanistic education can enrich our community through collaborative practice. Attention to national conversations about the values in and of the humanities is enhanced by collaborative work on projects that take Cleveland and its institutions as our humanities “laboratory” environments.
HUMN-225: CHC, Leadership (1 credit)
This experiential enrichment seminar is open to all advanced undergraduate humanities majors. The course explores interdisciplinary leadership values and skills, with an emphasis on leadership at companies, nonprofits, and cultural institutions in greater Cleveland. The seminar also develops core skills to help students secure a career or graduate study in humanities-related fields.
HUMN-305 / 405: Coding for the Humanities (3 credits)
This hybrid classroom provides an entry-level introduction to coding for the humanities. It is focused on the digital humanities concepts and skills researchers in fields like History, Religious Studies, and English use everyday, including: coding (Python), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning. The course is essential for students designing new research projects as well as for those who would like to apply their humanities skills to careers where familiarity with basic coding is advantageous.
HUMN-422: Humanities Teaching Careers (0 credits)
This course is designed to give CWRU graduate students in the humanities, arts, and humanistic social sciences an introduction to teaching careers at community colleges. Topics will include: student and faculty life; course design and assessment; online, hybrid, and dual-enrollment teaching; community engagement; and research, tenure, and career paths.