This program will begin in the 2012-2013 academic year.

The program’s reading list is the Great Books. The major offers its students a broad liberal arts education through a comprehensive study of the western intellectual tradition as presented in philosophy, literature, theology, history and, to some extent, in the experimental sciences and mathematics. Under optimum circumstances, classes are conducted as seminars with a maximum enrollment of twenty students. This inter-disciplinary major allows Ave Maria University to offer its students the opportunity to be nourished in a truly integrated curriculum, as with Great Books Colleges and Programs elsewhere. The major in Humanities and Liberal Studies is a properly catholic discipline for a Catholic University.

Required courses:

HUMS 201: Western Intellectual History I
HUMS 202: Western Intellectual History II
PHIL 302: Ancient Philosophy
PHIL 305: Medieval Philosophy
LITR 206: Shakespeare
THEO 309: Christ and His Church or THEO 411: Advanced Scripture
POLT 402: Modernity and Post-modernity
PHIL 405: Philosophy of Science

Electives: Courses from any department with substantial interdisciplinary content or within the Western intellectual tradition are eligible. The following are among the elective courses satisfying these criteria:

HUMS 490 Capstone Seminar: Dialogue between Ancients and Moderns
ECON 303: Great Economic Ideas
GREK 203: Greek Readings
HST 290: History of Ideas
HST 366: British Empire
LATN 204: Golden Age Poetry
LATN 304: Latin Church Fathers
LITR 412: Twentieth Century Literature
LITR 415: Thomas More
LITR 490: Literary Theory
MATH 201: History of Mathematics
MUSC 212A/B: Survey of Western Music I / II
POL 201: Introduction to Political Thought
POL 302: Catholic Political Thought
POL 305: Politics and Literature
PHIL 402: Recent Philosophy
PHIL 403: Political Philosophy
PHIL 413: Modern and Contemporary Philosophy