Welcome

The Department of Humanities offers undergraduate students the opportunity to pursue a broadly based program of study emphasizing the different ways in which human cultures and their multiple forms of expression have developed historically and continue to develop today.

Humanities courses devote particular attention to the ways peoples in various times and places have expressed cultural values, practices and ideas of a philosophical, religious, moral, political and aesthetic nature. They foster a critical approach to reading and research that, in helping students learn to identify and question preconceived assumptions and values, allows them to engage and appreciate the interrelationship between diverse value systems and thereby to develop an analysis of the human and of human community.

• 2013-14 Mini-Calendar now available
• Directory of Recent Publications by Humanities Professors is now online.

Congratulations to:

• Distinguished Research Professor Michael Herren has just been awarded a Research Prize from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation. The prize will enable him to begin work on the first complete edition of the oldest Latin-English dictionary, the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, dated to the late seventh century. read more
   
  He will collaborate with Professor Hans Sauer, Emeritus Professor of English Philology at the University of Munich. Herren, a leading specialist in Medieval Latin Philology, plans to use the resources of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae and the Medieval Latin Dictionary projects, both located in the Bavarian Academy in Munich. In 2004 Herren received the Konrad Adenauer Research Prize, jointly sponsored by the Humboldt Foundation and the Royal Society of Canada, in recognition of his life's work in the Humanities.
   
  In 2007 Herren was invited to be Distinguished Visiting Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and in 2010 was made a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. In 2011 he published a new edition, first translation, and major study of the enigmatic Cosmography of Aethicus Ister (Brepols N.V.). Herren continues to engage in post-retirement teaching at York and in doctoral supervision both at York and at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto.
   
  
• Efram Sera-Shriar, J.F.R.A.I. (Junior Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute) has been awarded a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Science and Technology Studies Program. His area of expertise is the history of 19th century anthropology. He is also the Coordinator of the John Tyndall Correspondence Project at Leeds.
• Tony Burke for the 2012 Frank W. Beare Award for his book, De Infantia Iesu Evangelium Thomae Graece (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010)
• Bernie Lightman for his award: The SSHRC Partnership Development Grant. His project is titled, The Collected Letters of John Tyndall.
• Elicia Clements for being awarded a SSHRC Insight Grant for the book project, Modernist Literary Musics
• Carole Carpenter who was nominated by Pauline Greenhill for this year's Marius Barbeau Award, given for extraordinary accomplishments in Folklore and Ethnographic Studies. This is the only such national award given in Canada. It was presented on behalf of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada (FSAC), which is an academic society Carole founded and organized in 1975. The medal was awarded to Carole in June 2012 at the annual meeting of the FSAC.

• Congratulations to our colleague, Rob Tordoff, on the publication of Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greek Comic Drama, a book which he co-edited with Ben Akrigg (Cambridge University Press). more details.
• The Religions of Canadians (2012) Contributing Editor Jamie Scott more details
• Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook (2012), co-authored by York faculty member Philip Harland, with Richard S. Ascough and John S. Kloppenborg. The book comes with its own companion website.
• Victorian Science and Literature. The General Editors of the series are Gowan Dawson (University of Leicester) and Bernard Lightman (York University). There are 8 volumes.
• Historical Textures of Translation: Traditions, Traumas, Transgressions. (2012) Editors Markus Reisenleitner and Susan Ingram. more details
• Jamaica in the Canadian Experience A Multiculturalizing Presence. (2012) Editors Carl E. James and Andrea Davis. more details
• Theresa Hyun's book of poetry, A Cup of Tea at P'anmunjom g. (2012) Theresa is the first English speaker to publish such a book in Korean. more details

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