Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences
Core Humanities
All Caltech undergraduates have the opportunity to take a wide variety of courses in the humanities, including offerings in art history, freshman humanities, history, languages, literature, music, philosophy, and HPS (History and Philosophy of Science).
To qualify for a Bachelor of Science degree at Caltech, students in all options must pass a number of Core Institute Requirements, including 36 units in the Humanities, 36 units in Social Sciences, and an additional 36 units of either humanities or social sciences courses. A student typically earns 9 units for a humanities or social science class. Thus, all students must satisfactorily complete 108 units-or about 12 classes-in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences over their four years. This includes the work done in the two terms of "Freshman Humanities" (courses labeled 10 or below in the catalog) that all entering freshmen are required to take as well as more specialized upper-level classes.
Freshman humanities classes are meant to introduce students to the basic questions and objects of study in the three core disciplines of history, literature, and philosophy, and serve as the prerequisite for all advanced humanities classes with the exception of foreign languages. Offerings include: "American History," "The Classical and Medieval Worlds," "Early Modern Europe," "Modern Europe," "Major British Authors," "Major American Authors," "Right and Wrong," "Knowledge and Reality," "Introduction to the History of Science," and "Introduction to the Philosophy of Science." These classes are writing intensive - students produce an average of 4000 words over the quarter - and, like the other classes in the first two quarters of the freshman year at Caltech, are graded on a Pass/Fail basis.
The other eighteen required units should be fulfilled by taking advanced humanities courses. Advanced humanities options are diverse, including at any given time, for example, such courses as: "Causation and Explanation," "The Supreme Court in U.S. History," "Spanish and Latin American Literature in Translation," "Baroque Art," "Foundations of Probability and Inductive Inference," "The High Middle Ages," "Philosophy and Biology," "Gothic Literature," "Ethics in Research," "19th-Century American Women Writers," "French Cinema," or "History of the Modern Physical Sciences." In order to broaden the range of courses offered in the humanities, professors in literature, history, and philosophy also frequently teach new courses under the auspices of "Special Topics" courses (H161, HPS/H169, HPS/Pl 169, and Lit 180); recent classes have included "Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics," "The Irish Voice in History and Literature," and "Physics and National Socialism". In addition, Caltech offers introductory and advanced study in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Latin, and Spanish. (Students entering in Fall 2011-12 can no longer use language courses for the advanced humanities requirement).
