The Department of Humanities cultivates empathy toward diverse perspectives and experiences, curiosity about new ideas, and freedom of expression. Both inside and outside their classrooms, the faculty model the principles of respect, open-mindedness, free inquiry, and lifelong learning as they foster them among students.  Studying Humanities promotes the critical thinking, research, and communication skills that empower students to seek truth, enhance intellectual discussion, connect with others, and serve them equitably.  Acting together, the faculty and students strive to form a learning community that inspires its members to grow more reflective, creative, and self-aware.

The history, philosophy and humanities faculty therefore support these goals through the following methods and insights distinct to their disciplines:

• As the study of change over time, History contributes to the Humanities by connecting ideas about people and society (Philosophy) and theories of social organization (Sociology, Political Science) with the specific experiences of people in the past. A critical examination of the conditions of the past and the choices people made in the face of their experiences can inform our understanding of the present and the choices before us today.  In addition to providing context, History gives its students an opportunity to appreciate points of view other than their own and examine elements of their own culture that may have been invisible to them.  The empathy formed by trying to see people of a different time and place on their own terms is valuable in the increasingly multicultural global society of the present.
• Philosophy translates to “love of wisdom.” Wisdom entails evaluating individual and community priorities and directing effort and intellectual resources in the pursuit of appropriate priorities. BSU’s Philosophy program emphasizes a historical approach to philosophy. It allows us to understand and evaluate the ideas underpinning societies and historical periods. It also allows us to understand and evaluate our current ideas, as rules for action, in a historical context.
• Performance Studies scholars and artists study the embodied, the rehearsed, and the active elements of historical or contemporary subjects (ranging from the traditional performing arts, to food, to identity, to politics, to ritual, to sport, to even ourselves) in order to better understand culture and our place within it. Performance is multiple and layered; it is at the same time an object to be studied, a creative method of research, and a tool to engage our communities. Through performance studies we open our minds to new ideas, cultivate empathy, and consider and interact with the world in innovative ways.