Academics
The Humanities
The Humanities, properly understood, encompass all forms of human self-expression aimed at communication with others. Spoken language, music, written language of all genres, drama, visual arts, architecture, and more recently film and digital arts, have evolved in constant interaction with one another and in concert with technological developments and advances, and can only be fully understood in relation to one another.
The Humanities program at The Hill, uses "greatest jewels" of human creative and intellectual accomplishment, as the foundation from which the students as citizens of a rapidly changing 21st century global community will venture farther afield in both space (beyond the traditionally defined West) and time (to study contemporary creative works) while looking ahead to anticipate the adult world they are about to inherit.
Humanities 3 and 4 together are designed to guide students as they attain the sophisticated levels of both critical and creative thinking that are the foundation of effective, lucid and compelling oral and written articulation of their own understanding, analysis, and appreciation. These are the “skills” at the core of the Humanities program at The Hill, as they are throughout the liberal arts curriculum. It is the means to those ends that make the Humanities program at The Hill different; those skills are developed in response to and interaction with the “best” of human creation.
Within the environs of the Levis '45 * Alexandre '75 Center for the Humanities, students enrolled in Humanities 3 and 4 will write on a daily basis, while exploring a wide range of genres and rhetorical methods and techniques as both critics and practitioners themselves. Students must be prepared to be challenged daily within an active, interdisciplinary, student-centered learning environment. This course requires summer preparatory work, which includes, reading, writing, and experiential activities.
For more information about the Humanities Department, please contact Dr. Mark Pearson '78 P'20 '24, the Elizabeth B. Blossom Chair of Humanities and Co-Director of the Writing Center, at mpearson@thehill.org.
Humanities Course Offerings:
Click each class title to view a description.
- 6th Form
- AP
- 5th Form
- AP
A Brief History of the Humanities at The Hill School:
The humanities have been taught at The Hill by some of the School’s finest masters, beginning with Paul Chancellor, who created the program in 1946, when secondary school-level humanities programs were quite rare.
Chancellor led the program until 1954, when he was succeeded by John Anderson, who taught Humanities from 1954 to 1999. Henry Bender, Ph.D. was the chairman from 1998 until his retirement in 2012. Kathryn Malone, Ph.D., served as the School’s Elizabeth B. Blossom Chair of Humanities from the fall of 2012 to 2024. Mark Pearson, Ph.D. '78 P'20 '24 currently holds this position.
From 1946 to 2014, the humanities’ home was the stately Levis Room, named in memory of John M. Levis ’46. In January 2014, a completely renovated and technologically upgraded room was dedicated as the Levis ’45 * Alexandre ’75 Center for the Humanities, in tribute to the generosity of Julie and Jim Alexandre ’75.