Browse Humanities Courses

Discover subjects that will challenge your thinking and expand your worldview.

Our core humanities courses are offered every Fall and Spring. Check out some of our featured courses below, and meet the faculty members who are teaching them this semester. No matter which you choose, each course offers an accessible introduction to its subject, while also developing the vital critical thinking and communication abilities you'll use throughout your academic journey and beyond

Discovery Seminars

Discovery-Based Learning

Discovery Seminars are small, mentor-led courses (15-18 students) where your professor also serves as your academic advisor, creating meaningful relationships that support your entire Oxford journey. These courses teach you how to find and use evidence to question, analyze, interpret, and create new knowledge within a field of study, while encouraging you to explore both familiar interests and completely new areas of inquiry.

Fall 2025 HUM Discovery Seminars

The Politics of Religious Freedom
Florian Pohl

The Rhetoric of Public Memory
Joseph Cheatle

Les Misérables: Hugo's Version
Matthew Moyle

Mad Scientists, Monsters, and Men: Literature and Mental Health
Adriane Ivey

Human Displacement: Understanding Forced Migration in a Modern, Global Context
Daniel Walter

Sky Maps: The Making of Human Meaning through Pictures of the Cosmos
Mary Johnson

Mindfulness, Movement, and Media
Alejandro Abarca

Check Out Fall 2025 DSC_OX 101 Courses

PATHS Discovery Seminars (DSC) - New for Fall 2025!

Beyond DSC engaging course topics, PATHS participants connect across disciplines through shared readings, exclusive cultural programming, and collaborative experiences that transform individual learning into community impact.

Instructor: Prof. Nick Fesette 

Class Time: M/W 11:30 am-12:45 pm

Creating interesting images and telling good stories are crucial skills. In this course you will devise, rehearse, and perform original theatre pieces based on stories by other writers and artists, in order to develop the scholarly processes of research, composition, revision, and presentation. You will also write about yourself and use this source material to make performances. This course is for actors and non-performers alike.

Meet Nick Fesette

Instructor: Prof. Maria Gonzalez Davis 

Class Time: M/W 11:30 am-12:45 pm

Why is the use of fantasy and the supernatural so popular in literature and cinema? How does the use of fantasy relate to the social, scientific and religious context of the time in which it was produced? How does it relate to you? These and many more questions will be answered in this course! In this discussion-based course, you will observe how Freud’s exploration of the unconscious provides a useful lens to read and interpret Romantic works, such as "The Sandman", which anticipates concepts like the uncanny and the double. You will read a variety of literature from different countries that focus on the fantastic, including Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland", Kafka's "The Metamorphosis", Gabriel García Márquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", Henry James’s "The Turn of the Screw", and many others.

Meet Maria Gonzalez Davis

Instructor: Prof. Henry Bayerle 

Class Time: M/W 11:30 am-12:45 pm

How do Ancient Greek and Roman definitions of leadership relate to ours? How can ancient and modern ideas about leadership be used to understand the culture of Greece and Rome? This discovery seminar serves as an introduction to two fields: the academic study of the ancient Mediterranean and leadership studies. We will compare current theories of leadership with the ideals expressed by ancient authors such as Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius, with a focus on leadership traits, styles, goals, and behavior. We will examine the relationship between leadership and different political systems: Athenian democracy, Spartan oligarchy, and the Roman monarchy, republic, and empire. We will also explore how ideals of individual leadership can contribute to the success of teams in hands-on group projects. Additional real-world scenarios will be presented in visits by academic, military, and corporate leaders.

Meet Henry Bayerle

Intrsuctor: Prof. Anouar El Younssi

Class Time: Tu/Th 1:00 pm-2:15 pm

This course considers how literature and film from the Arab/Moslem World address questions of social justice and human rights. Literary and cinematic works from the diverse territories of the Arab/Moslem world show a wide range of responses to these critical questions. We will consider how literature and film reflect, respond to, and have the power to influence politics and society at large. An important thread in this course relates to the events of the so-called “Arab Spring”—a series of pro-democracy protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across North Africa and the Middle East starting in late 2010—and their repercussions. Another key theme the course investigates is Arab/Moslem “feminism” as it pertains to women’s struggle to gain more/equal rights. We will also tackle the notion of the “other” as it unfolds in literary and cinematic works, and make links to historical periods, including Colonialism and Decolonization.

Meet Anouar El Younssi
Looking Ahead?

Keep an eye on Emory Course Atlas for previews of next semesters’ course selections!

Questions about course selection? Contact your academic advisor or reach out to one of our faculty members with your questions!

View Complete Course Atlas Catalog