Pursue Your Humanistic and Artistic Inquiry

Thematic and Topical Pathways

Listed below are key thematic areas of study, followed by the departments, centers, programs, majors, minors and concentrations that offer related coursework, internships, research and other experiential learning opportunities.

Arts and the Creative Experience

Unlock your untold, undiscovered stories — personal and collective, real and imagined — through the arts, making words and texts, images and objects, or performing on stage. As makers, artists can lead in shaping the world and moving it forward.

Social Good and Social Justice

The School of Humanities prepares students to contribute to the broader social good as students and future citizens. Study past and present issues of social justice from the perspective of our disciplines — history, philosophy, religion, English — or through one of our interdisciplinary minors.

Ethics, Values and Morality

Questions of ethics, morals and values churn through nearly all fields of science, engineering, medicine and business, and are fundamental to the study of philosophy and religion, to the practices of social and public policy, public health, psychology and law, among others. Explore these questions in our philosophy and religion courses — and our interdisciplinary areas of study.

Global Citizenships and Cultures

Explore this world by studying languages, literatures, cultures and histories across the globe and the arc of time — in Rice classrooms or in our study abroad programs.

Science, Technology and Society

It doesn’t take a pandemic for us to recognize how science and technology emerge from human social, political and cultural contexts and in turn, have a profound impact on social structures, politics, public policy, ethics and culture.