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Academic Programs

Many of the centers within the Humanities Institute offer undergraduate and graduate academic programs. Learn more about each program by clicking on the links below.


Undergraduate Minors

Asian American Studies Undergraduate Minor

Asian American Studies is an interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on the histories, experiences, and cultures of people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent living in the United States. It seeks to broaden students' understanding of the diversity and complexity of Asian American identities and communities.

Latinx Studies Undergraduate Minor

The Latinx Studies Minor allows students to deepen knowledge of Latinx experiences (social, economic, legal, etc.), histories, literatures, cultures, and arts; enhance critical learning skills; learn comparative and interdisciplinary methods of analysis; and develop close working relationships with faculty and other students.

American Indian Studies Undergraduate Minor

American Indian Studies is an interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on the histories, experiences, languages, arts, and cultures of peoples indigenous to the lands that now comprise the United States. It seeks to broaden understanding of and make connections between Native peoples and cultures in the U.S. and Indigenous peoples across the Americas and around the globe.

Folklore Minor

The Folklore Minor is open to students in any department, through the Department of Comparative Studies. Folklorists focus on a broad spectrum of social expression, examining the forms and ways of living through which communities shape their reality. Those forms include language, work, food, play, dance, song, gestures, beliefs, and so forth.

Religious Studies Minor

The Religious Studies minor is interdisciplinary and cross‐departmental by design. The employs an academic approach to religion, stressing its role as an important dimension of human experience in different cultural contexts.

Minor in Jewish Studies

The goal of the Jewish Studies Minor is to provide an overview of Jewish culture, history, and thought from the biblical period to the present. The minor will offer an appreciation of how Jewish culture, history, and thought can be applied to practices in the legal, educational, and other fields.

Minor in Jewish Oral History

Oral history is a tremendously powerful and important tool in today’s world of Jewish Studies. The minor in Jewish Oral History at Ohio State combines a background in modern Jewish history, needed to understand the significance of such oral histories, with knowledge of the proper techniques and legal issues involved in recording oral histories through various media.

Minor in Hebrew

In addition to coursework in Hebrew language, literature, culture, undergraduate students may also pursue interdisciplinary programs in Jewish Studies.

Minor in Yiddish

The minor in Yiddish consists of 15 units of coursework beyond Yiddish 1103. Once a faculty advisor in the Yiddish Program has approved the Minor Program Form, the student must file the form with a college/school counselor.

Minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies

The minor in Medieval and Renaissance studies consists of a minimum of 15 credit hours and is designed to serve those students planning to pursue graduate degrees in Medieval and Renaissance areas of study and those who wish to learn more about these periods while they prepare for careers in other fields.

Minor in South Asian Studies

“South Asia” describes the region that includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.  Rich in history and culture, South Asia is increasingly important on the global scene. Over one fifth of the world’s population lives in South Asia, an area which is home to major world religions, including Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Christianity. South Asia also hosts the largest democracy in the world, made up of a 1.2 billion person constituency. Over two thousand languages from five different language families are spoken here.


Undergraduate Majors

Majors with a Folklore Concertation

Folklore is vernacular art, the culture that people make for themselves. The forms of folklore circulate from person to person and group to group, adapting to every change of context: they are both deeply traditional and new with every performance. Folklore is cherished by families or danced on the streets by unruly young people. It is despised as old-fashioned, banned as dangerous, preserved as precious heritage, mass-produced for tourists, and called on to legitimate both wars and social justice movements. Folklorists study the careers of these malleable collective forms across time and space.

The Folklore Concentration within the Comparative Studies major

A Folklore Concentration within the English major

Religious Studies Major

Religious studies is a uniquely comparative, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary way to study the world’s religions. Students develop a broad knowledge of the world’s religions past and present, along with the opportunity for critical analysis of the role of religion in relation to other social and cultural domains: history, politics, art, literature, science, technology and the media.

Major in Hebrew & Jewish Studies

Study the language, culture, literature and linguistics of Hebrew. Progress from a working knowledge of the language toward oral and written proficiency. Read Hebrew literature first in English translation, then in Hebrew.

Major in Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Medieval and Renaissance studies provides a wide-ranging introduction to the medieval and early modern eras, spanning late antiquity to the mid-seventeenth century and reaching from Europe to cultures around the globe. It is adaptable to individual student interests, emphasizing historical traditions but also promoting reflection on the presence of the past in a fast-moving twenty-first-century world. The major offers excellent preparation for humanities graduate programs, but also provides a useful and well-rounded education for any student who values history, culture and the arts in their broadest sense.


Graduate Studies

Latinx Studies Graduate Specialization

The goal of the GIS is to assist graduate students in gaining advanced knowledge of Latinx Studies and training in its interdisciplinary methods. Students will examine the histories and lived experiences of multiple Latinx groups in the U.S., gaining greater understanding of the relationship between power and difference. Students will also study multiple forms of Latinx creative expression with a focus on analysis of expressive forms themselves; theoretical frameworks for the interpretation of culture, literature, and art; the historical, social, and aesthetic contexts of Latinx cultural production; and its intertextualities.

Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Folklore Studies

Students in any department in the university may receive a formal credential in folklore with the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization (GIS), offering a compact but rigorous preparation.

MA and PhD Programs with Folklore Concentration

Prospective students apply to departmental programs rather than to CFS, and the departments also administer most financial support.Most students wishing to do the equivalent of a full degree program in folklore work through the Department of Comparative Studies or the Department of English in the Division of Arts and Humanities. Each of these departments has requirements specific to it, but is accustomed to admitting and supporting self-identified folklorists and provides the opportunity to take a full range of folklore coursework and work with folklore faculty.

Graduate Studies in Jewish Studies

Graduate students may pursue M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Jewish Studies through departments such as English, History, Music, Philosophy and Political Science, to name a few. Advanced degrees are offered in Hebrew through the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, as well as Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies though the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. The College of Education offers a Masters of Arts degree in Education with a specialization in Jewish Studies. Other departments accept students who want an advanced degree focused on an area of Jewish studies. Some of these inlcude but are not limited to history, political science, geography, archaeology, etc.

Graduate Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies

The Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies provides students an option to pursue a Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization and a Graduate Certificate.

Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in South Asian Studies

This GIS allows students to complete graduate level work in the field of South Asian Studies.