Tag

humanities

Browsing

faculty-mentor-APUBy Dr. Jennifer Cramer
Program Director, Sociology, Anthropology, and Women’s Studies at American Public University

Engagement is a key factor in student success. Faculty members work to foster engagement in courses by cultivating discussion and motivating students to be curious and thoughtful about applying what they learned in class. What many students might not know is that faculty can use their discipline expertise to help provide students with ideas for finding internships, conference workshops, field schools, or other hands-on, experience-based opportunities that will help them take what they are learning in classes to the next level. These experiences bring a competitive or unique edge to a graduate’s toolkit as they hit the job or graduate school market.

As an undergraduate, I really struggled with the large courses that had over 300 students and the lectures without discussions. For me, it was difficult to make the same kind of connections with faculty that I had been used to in my small high school classrooms. I felt disengaged and frankly, somewhat lost. Unexpectedly, what turned this around for me was that I needed to work. This blessing in disguise led me to a job in a genetics lab on campus. In four years working there, I learned completely new things, including how to use equipment like an autoclave, manage a database, and how to conduct basic research. I met professors I did not have classes with, I went to guest lectures, and I learned some of the ins and outs of life as an academic researcher. The genetics professor took time to meet with me regularly, he encouraged me to consider graduate school, and he kept tabs on what courses I was taking and how they were going.

By Fr. Kurt Messick
Faculty Member, Humanities at American Public University

Religious studies goes beyond the study of ideologies. One great thing to consider is the influence and culture, and the architecture that is created to support that institution. In this article you will get some great background, and a first-hand experience of the tradition of churches in a remote area of Iceland.

By Dr. Melanie McBride
Associate Professor, Arts and Humanities at American Public University

Back in 2000, Shelley Taylor and her colleagues introduced us to the idea that flight or fight was a typically male response to stress. Women have another instinctive move that Taylor identified as “tend and befriend,” meaning that women in stressful situations gather social support by talking with friends. It turns out that many things that we know about the brain are actually things that we know about the male brain.

By Ljubica Jovanovic
Faculty Member, Humanities at American Public University

Different understandings of the shared biblical events and stories lie at the bottom of their historical, and contemporary, disagreements and violent interactions. Living and working in today’s world demands a good knowledge not only of the contents of the Hebrew Bible stories and books, but also of their interpretations and use in the rhetoric of current political discourse.

By Mark Kelley, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Humanities, American Public University

We learn from the study of Greek tragedy that without a community willing to check the instinctual human disposition to barbarism—martial and civilian—civilization dissolves. Avoiding chaotic mass violence requires a durable social or civilizing construct and a tolerant population disposed to share in, sacrifice for, and maintain that civilizing paradigm.

By Lindsey Hand
Faculty Member, Humanities at American Public University

We often think of communication as a skill rather than a field in which empirical research is conducted, but the study of communication is quite significant across many disciplines. Let’s take a look at a few disciplines from each school at APU and discover how communication studies are relevant and important to your academic program.

By Helen “Beth” Driver
Faculty Member, School of Arts and Humanities at APU

With apologies to Charles Dickens, I have seen the best of papers, and I have seen the worst of papers. I read essays that exhibited wisdom, and, unfortunately, I read essays that appeared rather uninformed. And then there are the papers I’ve read that reflect a much higher purpose.

By Dr. Chris Myers
Associate Professor, Arts and Humanities Program at American Public University

One of the most shocking things about language is that it is always changing! New words are constantly conceived to describe new human experiences and this is nowhere more clear than in innovative communication technology and social media.

The true value of the study of the liberal arts and the humanities resides in the concept of a moral compass–developing a sense of what it truly means to be human and to exercise the powers of reason.