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- [Teacher] One beauty of the humanities sequence is that
students are required to read extensively,
intensively, and deeply.
The structure of the course is that.
- [Student] It's more of an interdisciplinary approach
to literature and learning that kind of incorporates
all of the resources that Dartmouth College has to offer.
- You're going to read the classics.
Those are going to range from Shakespeare
to the Tale of Gengi,
arguably the first novel ever written
all the way to the poems of John Donne, Dante's Inferno.
- We're doing art history, we're looking at some films.
This term we were able to watch an opera.
The combination of looking at all of those different kinds
of materials I think is extraordinarily valuable.
- [Kyle] You're going to discuss them in class.
There's a ton of discussion.
- The class is also a way to connect.
It also gives us the chance to band together,
to think together, and to share common knowledge
and common experiences.
- [Teacher] It stretches them in lots of different ways
because they're reading across canons,
they're reading across the globe.
- It's a course that can change your life.
It's a course that will introduce students
to the best of what's been thought and said
in the Western tradition and in other traditions.
- It really is what Dartmouth is all about.
It's a liberal arts institution
committed to human experience.
- We want them to see that these are not
just dead pieces of literature, they're not flies in amber.
They are things that can actually help us
to understand ourselves.
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- The point of the course is to open you up
to a set of ideas, to a set of texts,
and to a way of thinking
which I think of in terms of analytical, skeptical,
rigorous thinking about important, serious issues.
- The thing with humanities is it teaches you
how to think, how to analyze, how to be critical
about what you're reading and what you're saying.
- Giving them the space early on to learn how to
formulate and have dialog with fellow students respectfully,
be able to get excited about your ideas,
be able to say and hear and accept when someone says
"I don't agree with you" and not feel defensive,
those are all the kinds of things they also learn, I think,
in the discussion sections.
- My job as the instructor of the class was to teach them
to link their deep, immersive reading with writing
that is also deep and immersive and analytical
of that reading.
- The thing that I took away the most from the course
was primarily confidence.
I think going into freshman fall it can be very scary
to come into a class and be expected to speak
and to contribute.
- You do really have to do your best work in the class,
and it's a challenging class, but you're given the tools
to help you, and those tools don't end
with the end of Humanities 2, they continue with you.
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- It allows you to have a place to discuss anything,
and above all it's just a really challenging course,
which can be intimidating but also beyond rewarding.
- [Teacher] The kind of course that really is perfect
for somebody who wants their first year to be
as exciting and open as it can be.
- The Humanities group is a community,
and it's a very cool community
because people come from crazy different backgrounds,
people from all over the country and all over the world.
- There's a very interesting dynamic there
where everyone brings something different
and everyone's very interested
in keeping the discussion on point.
- I would recommend it to any student
who really has a passion to learn, and I say that
because you will learn, and you will learn things
you didn't think were possible,
you will look at yourself in new ways.
- Any student coming in to Dartmouth
can and should do courses like this.
That's, I hope, you know, they would apply for.
None of these students coming in should feel
that this is beyond them, it's just not, it's just not,
as long as they've got that fundamental curiosity.
- [Kyle] It is the most rewarding thing you could do
with your first couple of quarters at Dartmouth,
and I really believe that.
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