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wish to pursue a liberal arts
degree program may find an economics major particularly
rewarding.
English
As an intellectual discipline,
English provides students the opportunity to study
literature and language within a major of flexible
design while cultivating their reading and writing
skills with care and assiduity. The English faculty are
among the most decorated in the university for their
excellence in teaching. Students study
“core” authors while at the same time
having the option of choosing a concentration suited to
their own intellectual interests. English offers more
than 15 distinct concentrations—including the
option of an individualized concentration—and is
the only department
in which one can major with an emphasis in creative writing.
Course offerings in the
department seek to go wherever the English language is
or has been, and English students this year will study
everything from medieval and Renaissance culture to
romanticism, modernism, literary theory and film.
Nearly all majors’ concentrations involve some
interdisciplinary study, and, indeed, English majors
are encouraged to understand English and American
history in international perspective and in relation to
other cultural and expressive forms.
Environmental Studies
Many contemporary problems of
environmental quality are so complex that modern
society and technology have not yet been able to
coordinate efforts to reach satisfactory solutions.
There is thus an urgent need for individuals to be well
versed in one discipline (e.g., geology, ecology,
political science, history, etc.) and to be able to
apply that discipline directly to environmental
problems by being sensitized to the contributions that
other disciplines can make.
The Program in Environmental
Studies is designed to lead students to that awareness
through a series of courses focused on environmental
systems and issues, while ensuring that each student
pursues a purposeful course of study in some
traditionally defined area of scholarship.
Graduates of this curriculum are
prepared for professions directly or indirectly
involved with problems of environmental quality; they
may go on to further study, either in their areas of
concentration, in formal programs of environmental
studies, or in medical, law or other professional
schools. In many cases, a student’s career
objectives are best realized by undertaking a double
major in environmental studies and a specific area of
concentration. Such a program need not represent a
significant increase in total course units.
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European Studies (minor only)
European Studies at Penn is an
interdisciplinary minor and an ideal addition to the
study of many disciplines in the humanities and social
sciences. It supplements majors in history, political
science, sociology and art history as well as in
French, German, English, Spanish, Italian and Slavic
languages. It is designed to give students access to an
understanding of Europe as an historical and cultural
entity and its world leadership in business, politics
and culture. It encompasses a great variety of
countries, cultures and languages whose interaction
with each other and the United States is an essential
part of transatlantic culture. Students also learn
about the institutions of the new Europe—Union,
Council of Europe, European Court—reflecting the
largest experiment in building a global system of
governance in history. The minor in European studies is
designed to intensify interdisciplinary studies by
integrating the humanities and social sciences and to
prepare students to live and work in Europe.
Fine Arts
Visual thinking is as integral to
the life of the mind as verbal and numerical discourse.
The major in fine arts is based upon the premise that
an education in liberal studies should include the
challenge of learning to see. Further, the education of
the artist is dramatically improved by an education in
liberal studies.
The Department of Fine Arts has
designed a program that provides students with
opportunities for intellectual growth through studies
in visual formulation and visual articulation. It is a
large program with sequenced courses in painting,
drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics,
animation, graphic design, film/video and multi-media.
Undergraduates often double-major
in fine arts and in fields such as communication, art
history, English, anthropology, etc. Career pursuits
include: art practice; education; medicine and law; all
of the design industries, such as industrial design,
fashion design, graphic design and multi-media design;
the presentation industries; and the entertainment
industries.
Folklore and Folklife (minor
only)
The discipline of folklore
emerged in the 19th century and was forged by the
scholarly and intellectual trends and the social and
political conflicts of the 20th century. Folklore is
the study of human expression in languages, images,
music and food, and of movements in traditional
societies and the representation of these forms in the
world of modern
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