Academics

Humanities Department

CONTACT Information

Location: Conlon Fine Arts Building, Room 263
Acting Chairperson: Petri Flint, 978-665-3461
Secretary: Alexandria Lima, 978-665-3276
Admissions Office: 978-665-3144 or admissions@fitchburgstate.edu

SUMMARY

The Humanities Department is home to Art, Music, Philosophy, and Languages, fields that have influenced the development of our culture as much as science and technology. In today's ever-changing global job market, students will need to understand complex relationships between the many layers of their responsibilities, not just their particular job-related skills. The separate disciplines in Humanities foster the kind of creative and critical thinking skills, as well as inter-cultural awareness, that are vital to success in our globalized society. The Department is also the home of the Interdisciplinary Studies Major.

Art offers students the chance to study art history and studio art through a wide range of topics, including art history from antiquity to the present day and Non-western perspectives, as well as drawing, painting, sculpture, and 2-D and 3-D design. The Art faculty also sponsors a biannual gallery exhibit to showcase student achievements. The Music area offers a wide range of courses in music history, theory, composition, and performance, and also sponsors a number of choral and instrumental performance groups featured in concerts every semester, and which perform at other university functions. Philosophy offers courses in human nature, logic, world religions, among many others—essential elements of a liberal arts curriculum. Foreign languages at Fitchburg State University have expanded to reflect an increasingly global focus, and students may now study Arabic, Italian, French, Latin, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish. They may also gain credits through diverse study abroad opportunities.

FACULTY

The Humanities Department is home to a diverse faculty with a wide range of disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, who all hold doctoral or equivalent terminal degrees. In addition to being dedicated educators, our faculty members are active professionals in their fields of expertise: they are published researchers and composers, performing musicians, and exhibiting artists. Their global range of interests and expertise makes them an excellent resource for students seeking a deeper engagement with the world around us.

FACILITIES

The Humanities Department has a range of facilities to support the diverse needs of our individual courses. There are mediated classrooms for music courses, as well as music technology labs with synthesizers and music scoring software. We have classrooms with Steinway grand pianos, a Model B Steinway concert piano in the Kent Recital Hall, and a Model L Steinway concert piano in Weston Auditorium. We recently installed a number of state-of-the-art Wenger practice rooms with Boston upright pianos and Yamaha keyboards. There are art studios for sculpture, drawing, design, water and oil-based painting; and fully mediated art history and language classrooms. Our facilities compare favorably with many of those offered elsewhere in the state.