Information About the School of Humanities

The UCI School of Humanities is where future leaders, communicators, scholars, CEOs, storytellers, creatives, directors, writers, and entrepreneurs come to get their start.

In the humanities, we study human culture and accomplishments throughout time and across the world. A humanities education imparts deep knowledge of history, languages, literature, philosophy, media and the visual arts, and an understanding of the contributions of influential thinkers, writers and artists. At UCI, the humanistic perspective doesn’t end with the disciplines under the umbrella of our school; we apply humanistic perspectives to illuminate the human dimensions of all disciplines, including technology, science and medicine.

Studying the humanities at UCI will enrich your understanding of the human world by introducing you to, and sparking in you, ideas that matter.

Students in the UCI Humanities:

• Leverage our 4+1 program, available in art history, Asian American studies and European thought & culture, to complete a master's degree in just one additional year beyond the completion of the bachelor's degree.
• Meet like-minded peers, and explore the world, through our many clubs and student organizations, as well as study abroad.
• Major and minor in some of the nation’s most cutting edge and unique disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas of study, which include the nation’s only literary journalism major, one of the nation’s few visual studies Ph.D. programs, and unique minors like medical humanities and humanities and law.
• Gain professional experience through our internship programs, including the English Internship Program, Film and Media Studies Summer Internship Awards, Humanities Out There, and with on campus organizations like New University and KUCI News.
• Deepen their knowledge and spark creativity through exciting courses ranging from ancient myths and medieval monsters to the history of medicine, digital storytelling, nature writing, the international cultures of food, and the worldwide influence of hip-hop–just to name a few.
• Activate their cultural and linguistic understanding through our many language and cultural study courses, including Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, Spanish and more.

Faculty in the UCI Humanities:

• Lead 17 research centers, from Shakespeare to the medical humanities.
• Work across disciplines, within and beyond the humanities, to illuminate our understanding of complex and urgent issues like climate change.
• Earn some of the world’s most coveted awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, Guggenheim Fellowships, National Humanities Medal, National Book Critics Circle awards, the Blaise Pascal Medal, the Berlin Prize, and more.
• Author groundbreaking scholarship that broadens our understanding of the past, present and what the future might look like.

Alumni of the UCI Humanities:

• Include a broad range of talented scholars, filmmakers, change-makers, fiction and nonfiction writers and journalists, lawyers, business leaders, and more. Our distinguished alumni include: Aimee Bender and Alice Sebold, bestselling authors; Erin Gruwell, education activist and author of The Freedom Writers Diary; Randall Baumberger, president of Paramount Studios; Kevin McGuiness, chief operating officer of the Major League Baseball Players Association; Amy Scott, Ph.D., chief curator and Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross Curator of Visual Arts at the Autry Museum of the American West; Barry Lam, associate professor of philosophy at Vassar and writer/producer of the critically acclaimed podcast "Hi-Phi Nation"; Roxy Shih, internationally acclaimed film producer and director; and Sona Patel, senior social media strategy editor for The New York Times.
• Earn some of the world's most coveted awards. Three alumni of our M.F.A. Programs in Writing have earned Pulitzer Prizes: Michael Chabon, Yusef Komunyakaa and Richard Ford; and several of our alumni have earned Emmy Awards, including David Benioff, co-creator and show-runner of HBO’s “Game of Thrones," and Michaela Holland, virtual-reality journalism pathbreaker. 

What we offer our community and public:

• Exciting events and programming that inspire, educate and empower.
• Insight into the most meaningful issues of the day through faculty op-eds, interviews and news stories.
• A gateway to the world. Our many cultural centers and programs host a wide range of events each year, from signature events like The Vahe and Armine Meghrouni Lecture Series in Armenian Studies and Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Symposium on Persian Language and Literature, to film festivals, lectures, author talks, workshops and social events.