Robert Duffy (Humanities)
3 Credits, CRN 2026, M/Th 4:00-5:15
No prerequisites and open to all students; required for Catholic Humanities minors and Catholic Studies majors; satisfies the Oral Communication proficiency of the Core Curriculum.

In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Miranda exclaims in wonder: “O brave new world, that has such people in it!” Every person has some answer to the question, “What does it mean to be human?” But how should we put our answer into words? And how do we know we are right? In this class we will study works of philosophy, theology, literature, and the arts that will help us answer these questions. We will uncover and begin to explore some of the core “decisions” that shape our answers (and therefore also shape our lives). For example: Should we first pursue virtue or material success? What is the role of friendship in living a good life? What does a good community look like? Is work simply a necessary evil, or can it be humanizing? How should we relate to the natural world? How should we approach technology? Who is God and how is he important to our lives? Throughout we will be seeking to understand the true dignity and mystery of the human person.

James Keating (Theology and Humanities)
3 Credits, CRN 2027, T/Th 11:30-12:45
No prerequisites and open to all students; required for Catholic Humanities minors and Catholic Studies majors; satisfies the Oral Communication proficiency of the Core Curriculum.

The Humanities explore what it means to be human through literature, art, philosophy, theology, history, and related disciplines. In this course we will read and discuss philosophical reflections, essays, novels (graphic and otherwise), and poetry about human life. Our purpose will be to uncover what our authors wish to say about how one ought to live and how one oughtn’t. Much of what they say depends on how they view the nature of reality itself. We will read Christians and those who have ceased to be Christians. It’ll be great. Satisfies the Oral Communication proficiency of the core curriculum.

Patrick Macfarlane (Philosophy and Humanities)
3 Credits, CRN 2025, M/Th 10:00-11:15
No prerequisites and open to all students; required for Catholic Humanities minors and Catholic Studies majors; satisfies the Oral Communication proficiency of the Core Curriculum.

This is the foundational course for the minor in Catholic Humanities and the major in Catholic Studies and introduces students to the humanities through the concept of culture. We will consider a broad and interdisciplinary selection of texts and authors, including Sophocles, Plato, Shakespeare, Newman, Nietzsche, Eliot, Joyce, and Kafka. We will also read selections from the Bible and consider the theological work of David Bentley Hart. All are welcome! Satisfies the Oral Communication proficiency of the core curriculum.

Fr. Kenneth Gumbert (Theater, Dance, and Film) 
3 Credits, CRN 2621, T/Th 2:30-3:45
No prerequisites and open to all students. Crosslisted with Theater, Dance, and Film & American Studies

This course highlights the work of some of the most important American film directors from the classical era up to the present. We will look closely at the style and meaning of various films through a lens that examines the culture and imaginative influences at work upon these outstanding Hollywood film auteurs.

Matthew Cuddeback (Philosophy and Humanities) and
Francesca Cuddeback (Humanities)
3 Credits, CRN 2590, F 2:30-5:00
No prerequisites and open to all students; required for Catholic Studies majors; satisfies the Oral Communication proficiency of the Core Curriculum.

God is an artist, and the human person, made to God’s image, is called to create beauty in partnership with God. With that as guiding thread, this course is an interdisciplinary, humanistic study of beauty and human creativity. The course’s philosophy and theology of beauty will be drawn from Plato, Aquinas, Dante, Shakespeare, and John Paul II. Emphasis will be placed on personal encounter with beauty through artworks in different media (e.g. architecture, painting, sculpture, music, poetry, literature, liturgy) and from different historical periods. Satisfies the Oral Communication proficiency of the core curriculum.

Matthew Cuddeback (Philosophy and Humanities)
3 Credits, CRN 2023, T 2:30-5:00
No prerequisites and open to all students; required for Catholic Studies majors. Satisfies the Ethics requirement of the Core Curriculum.

A humanistic, interdisciplinary consideration of man’s yearning for and pursuit of happiness, and of the possibility of attaining it through a life of virtue and openness to divine grace. We shall study works of Christian philosophy, literature, poetry, and film, including authors such as Josef Pieper, Walker Percy, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Satisfies the Ethics requirement of the Core Curriculum.

Raymond Hain (Philosophy and Humanities)
1 Credit, CRN 2029, August, 2025
No prerequisites and open to all students; registration by permission of instructor only.

Verso l’Alto (“To the Heights”) is for rising seniors and emphasizes leadership development within the spiritual and intellectual context of the Catholic and Dominican tradition. Participants will travel to the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming where they will learn outdoor skills, including unsupported backpacking, within the context of spiritual and intellectual reflection and professional leadership development exercises. Part of the Humanities Program’s Duc in Altum initiative. Hosted by COR Expeditions. Open by invitation only.

Jay Pike (Chemistry)
1.5 Credits, CRN 2681, Thursday 4:00-5:15
Open to all students who are at least 21 years old by September 2, 2025. Contact the instructors to receive permission to register.

This Humanities Practicum will educate the palate and the mind when it comes to beer and its full and virtuous enjoyment. Each week we will learn about—and drink samples of—different beer traditions (everything from lagers and wheat ales to sours and smoked stouts), with an emphasis on the art of brewing and the crucial role that beer has played in the history and development of Western civilization (especially regarding community and conviviality). Cheers!

Travis Lacy (Theology)
1.5 Credits, CRN 2684, T 9:00-10:15
No prerequisites and open to all students.

An aimless bureaucrat, an adulterous spouse, and an alcoholic priest…these are just three of the most vibrant, moving characters in Graham Greene’s novels, characters whose flaws and failings leap off the page yet who nevertheless display a charming sanctity and heroism. Greene—an English convert to Catholicism—wrote movingly about the joys and sadness of the human condition, our inextinguishable thirst for the transcendent, and the curious attraction and tangible beauty of Catholicism, and he did so with a humor and insight that few modern authors have rivaled. In this class, we will explore these and other themes by reading three of his most “Catholic” (and, to my mind, his best) novels, each of which revolves one of the characters mentioned earlier: The End of the Affair (the adulterous spouse), The Power and the Glory (the alcoholic priest), and The Heart of the Matter (the aimless bureaucrat).

Christopher Berard (Humanities)
1.5 Credits, CRN 2715, T 4:00-5:15
No prerequisites and open to all students.

This interdisciplinary course traces the development of the legend of King Arthur from its shadowy beginnings in the Early Middle Ages (c. 500) to its starry heights in the High Middle Ages (c. 1250). We will focus on the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, or Vulgate Cycle, of Old French Prose Arthurian Romances (c. 1210–30), which is the most comprehensive and canonical version of the Arthurian legend ever written. This cycle, which includes the Queste for the Holy Grail and the Death of King Arthur, is from the age of Aquinas, has been called the Summa Arthuriana, and influenced the likes of Dante Alighieri and C. S. Lewis.

Robert Barry (Theology)
1 Credit, CRN 2030, T 1:30-2:20
No prerequisites and open to all students.

This one-credit Humanities Reading Seminar is a close reading of St. Augustine’s autobiographical Confessions. We will follow Augustine’s meditations on central issues important in every human life such as happiness, sin, death, memory, truth, time, friendship, sex, love, eternity, creation, and God.

Fr. Isaac Morales (Theology)
1 Credit, CRN 2033, M 1:30-2:20
No prerequisites and open to all students.

What is the nature of love? How can we love well, and how does love go wrong? How might distorted love be healed? These are the kinds of questions that will be the theme of this one-credit Humanities Reading Seminar. We will spend the first few weeks reading C. S. Lewis’s classic The Four Loves, in which he distinguishes between the different kinds of love in their positive and negative forms. We will then shift our attention to Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces, a re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth, in which he powerfully illustrates these loves in narrative form.

Kevin McMahon (Finance)
1 Credit, CRN 2709, W 12:30-1:20
No prerequisites and open to all students.

At first glance, Dorothy Day and Blaise Pascal approached their Catholic beliefs very differently. Dorothy Day lived among the poor with her hands in the soup kitchen bowls as she served outcasts with an awareness of the limitless worth of each person. One movie describing her complex life was titled Affairs of the Heart, a double entendre that also encapsulated her early wayward period of freedom-seeking amongst the likes of Eugene O’Neill and the Greenwich Village literary intelligentsia. Alternatively, Blaise Pascal lived out his faith with a Spock-like rationality. As a scientist and philosopher, his logical mind gave us Pascal’s wager and the Pascal software coding language (centuries before computers were invented). But were they really that different? To solve this question students will immerse themselves in the personality and spirituality of one of these characters, and then head out to grab lunch.

J. Columcille Dever (Theology)
3 Credits, CRN 2034, M/Th 2:30-3:45
No prerequisites and open to all students; satisfies a core requirement for Catholic Humanities minors and Catholic Studies majors; satisfies the Writing I proficiency of the Core Curriculum.

This course considers the Catholic intellectual tradition historically and thematically with an emphasis on contemporary opportunities and challenges. Our time is organized around two central figures: the modern poet T.S. Eliot and an ancient Christian bishop, Augustine of Hippo. Eliot’s The Four Quartets structures the course’s four units, while Augustine’s Confessions provides its deeper theological foundation. The units develop from one of Eliot’s Quartets, before turning (back) to Christian Scripture and (forward again) to Augustine’s Confessions. Each unit then concludes with a medieval theologian (Thomas Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, and John of the Cross) and a modern author (John Henry Newman, Graham Greene, and Flannery O’Connor) engaged in the same “on-going argument through time” about the central themes of the course, especially the cultivation of the theological virtues in “the time that is given us.” This course satisfies the Writing I proficiency of the Core Curriculum.

James Keating (Theology and Humanities)
3 Credits, CRN 2035, T 4:00-6:30 (day/time adjustable depending on student schedules)
Prerequisites: HUM 175, HUM 325 or HUM 326; open to seniors only, or with special permission of the Director of the Humanities Program. Satisfies the Writing II Proficiency of the Core Curriculum.

This is the required interdisciplinary capstone seminar for the Catholic Humanities minor. Themes will vary depending on the instructor and topics chosen by the students. Students will complete a substantial writing project designed in consultation with the instructor and requiring integration of prior coursework. Satisfies the Writing II Proficiency of the Core Curriculum.

James Keating (Theology and Humanities)
3 Credits, CRN 2024, T 4:00-6:30 (day/time adjustable depending on student schedules)
Prerequisites: senior status or permission of the Director required; Catholic Studies majors must have completed at least seven courses towards the major. Satisfies the Writing II Proficiency of the Core Curriculum.

This is the required interdisciplinary capstone seminar for the Catholic Studies major. Themes will vary depending on the instructor and topics chosen by the students. Students will complete a substantial writing project designed in consultation with the instructor and requiring integration of prior coursework. Satisfies the Writing II Proficiency of the Core Curriculum.