Through the study of the Integrated Humanities in NOCCA’s Academic Studio, students explore what it means to be human through critical, collaborative, and interdisciplinary inquiry. Within this supportive environment, students develop independent voices to grow as artist-intellectuals who creatively engage with the complexity and interconnectedness of human existence.

Integrated Humanities is, at its heart, a critical cultural studies program. It locates discipline-specific approaches to fields such as literature and history within a broader interdisciplinary inquiry, thus enabling students to cultivate a deeper understanding of what is at stake in the topic at hand. The Integrated Humanities program helps students cultivate certain habits of mind–asking questions, thinking critically and creatively, conducting research, performing analysis, and paying attention to evidence–that are crucial to the work of engaged artists and intellectuals. All four years of the program foster the development of these habits of mind through writing assignments, inquiry-based projects, and creative artistic expressions. The program follows a four-year chronological investigation of global history and culture from its cosmic origins to the twenty-first century.

 

Year One: The Story Begins: Our Past from Cosmic Origins to 1300 CE

Year Two: Encounters and Their Consequences, 1300 to 1700 CE

Year Three: Freedom and Haunting in Global Capitalist Modernity, 1700 to 1900 CE

Year Four: The U.S. in the World, 1900 to Present