Current Year's Catalog 2005-06

Undergraduate Studies

Evening and Weekend Studies

Evening and Weekend Class Listing

Summer Studies

Summer Class Listing

Graduate Studies

Master of Environmental Studies

Master of Public Administration

Master in Teaching

About Culture, Text and Language

The Culture, Text and Language planning area invites students to engage in academic study of what it means to be human and to participate in social life. Its faculty prize rigorous reflective inquiry and integrative understanding. Through study of cultures, students explore the webs of meaning that persons and groups use to make sense of their experience and the world. Through study of texts, they learn to interpret the embodiments of these meanings in forms ranging from enduring works to popular media and the artful practices of everyday life. Through study of languages, they become proficient in the means of communication in different societies and discover the beauty and power of words.

The Culture, Text and Language planning area coordinates some social science and virtually all the humanities curriculum at Evergreen. Our disciplines include literature, history, women's studies, philosophy, religion, classics, art history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, politics, communications, folklore, creative writing, French, Spanish, Russian and Japanese.

Many of our programs are organized as area studies, which we define as the interdisciplinary study of topics framed by geography, language, culture and history. We endeavor to make sure that students have access to a curriculum rich in the study of diverse cultures and languages so that they have ample opportunity to learn about shared legacies and across significant differences, including differences of race, class, gender and sexuality. We are committed to offering programs regularly in these areas: American Studies, classics, French language and the Francophone world (France, Quebec, the Francophone Caribbean, Francophone Africa), Japanese language and Japan, Middle East studies, Russian language and Eastern Europe, and Spanish language and the Hispanic world (Latin America, Spain, the United States).

Many Culture, Text and Language programs bring together two or more disciplines to examine critical questions about the human condition, and many also include community-based activities that put ideas into practice. Thus, students gain an interconnected view of the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Faculty act as advisors and mentors in their subjects of expertise, supporting students to do advanced work, internships, study abroad and senior theses.

The faculty of Culture, Text and Language invite students to work with them to create living links between our past and our present, in order to become, in the words of Charles McCann, Evergreen's first president, "undogmatic citizens and uncomplacently confident individuals in a changing world."