World Canonical Texts
By this point, all the departments listed as "Arts and Humanities" in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/pages/academic-divisions) have been covered, with the exception of 3:
- History of Art and Architecture
- Music
- Visual and Environmental Studies
These - with their focus on the non-textual components - falls more with the "Arts" part than the Humanities part.
What conclusions can we draw, from the look at the 5 departments (Comparative Literature, Linguistics, Philosophy, "The Study of Religion" Committee, and History [which is a department under "Social Science"]? Another table may be in order:
| Department | Courses | Inclusion of non-Western Areas |
Language
Requirement |
| Philosophy | 51 | Almost none | 0-1: French, German, Greek or Latin, or none |
| Linguistics | 54 | Some Pacific (Japanese, Chinese, Austronesian) | 2 "languages of scholarship" |
| Comparative Literature | 84 | A little Middle Eastern and World Literature | 3 or 4, besides European languages, at least one of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Arabic, Chinese or Sanskrit |
| Study of Religion | 118 | Some (23 courses) on non-western religions (Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, African) | 2 "modern languages of secondary scholarship" (typically French, German, sometimes Japanese) + primary source languages (unspecified) |
| History | 197 | Quite some faculty focuses on East Asian and Near Eastern/ African histories | 1-4: very specific regarding the many languages needed for medieval European history; loose in specifying East Asian and South Asian areas |
| Total | 504 | Some coverage, weakeast on South / Southeast Asia | 0-4: more perceived "universal" disciplines (linguistics, philosphy) has less language requirements and more western-centric; reverse for the more "specific" disciplines such as literature, religion and history |
Iona Cavalier (Sunday, 22 January 2017)
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