What is humanities, anyway?

I’ve been somewhat thoughtful, as I navigate the treacherous waters of non-traditional student-hood during finals week.  I’ve learned a lot in the last several months.  My favorite class was my Intro to Humanities class, which amuses me because I put meeting my school’s humanities requirement off until nearly the very end because I expected to hate it.  I thought it would be boring, stuffy lectures about art techniques and lots of probing artworks that we may never understand without the artists’ express explanation.  I was wrong.

I learned about history.  I learned really interesting things about what has happened on this earth we walk, and I came home and filled my family’s heads with what I found fascinating.  (Yes, even if they didn’t.)  I can talk about the World Wars or the fall of the Roman Empire without feeling like I am a child clumsily trying to keep up with the adults’ conversation now.

I learned about religion.  Now I understand the roots of the tension between so many.  I still think tolerance is the only way, but at least now I understand the foundations of these epic battles still waged today both in battlefields and backyards.  I know why the Madonna became prevalent in the Roman Catholic church when it did.  I know about anti-semitism in a very real way now, that I will forever be affected by.

I did learn about art, but not the stuffy way I had imagined.  I fell in love with Canova’s Cupid and Psyche and Rodin’s The Kiss. (That is Canova’s sculpture in the photo above.  It’s amazing, as is his other work. Carved out of a single piece of marble in 1796, and standing 61 inches tall, this piece is so exquisitely done that you can see the light through Cupid’s *marble* wings.)  I now know that Van Gogh painted not with a brush, but with a palette knife.  I learned that it’s FINE that Picasso makes no sense to me.  Surrealism is pretty nonsensical, by definition, after all.

I learned about architecture. Oh, sweet, architecture.  Buildings call out to me in a way I find hard to describe.  I want to photograph them, from every angle, with every lens, and run them through every filter, until I can find the ones that let me show them they way I see them. I know all about cathedrals now, and rose windows, and flying buttresses…if I ever make it to Europe, you are going to be *so* sick of cathedral photos.  Also?  Guggenheim, people.  Form follows function.

But really?  I learned about people.  I learned both how small I am, and how much impact I can have, if I choose to, and follow through.  I was blessed enough to have a truly great instructor, who brought the world around us to life, with only a darkened classroom, a Powerpoint presentation, and her own passion.  For that long hour, I had a window to the world and all its past, present, and potential future.

It was epic.

*Photo credit: sebastiagiralt on Flickr*