Bailey Thompson | News Editor

With finals week approaching, senior humanities major Madeleine Hannah set aside time on Nov. 26 to talk in Hamersly Library about the impact that being a humanities major has had on her college career.

With the humanities major at Western, students are able to choose two different focus areas from a variety of language-related departments: communication, English, French, German, Spanish, Philosophy and Religion. In doing so, the goal of the humanities department is for students to learn about language, “not only for communication but also in culture, literary art, and philosophical and religious thought,” according to the mission statement found on their website.

For Hannah, two of her greatest passions are English and Spanish, so she is grateful for a major that has allowed her to focus so heavily on both.

“I find that a lot of people (in humanities) start out doing other things,” said Hannah. “I was a linguistics major and I thought about being a Spanish major, and I feel like most people who wind up in humanities start somewhere else but realize that humanities is a better option for them.”

In terms of the community within the humanities major, Hannah shared that she has grown close with her classmates and professors in both her concentration areas, but that her major itself is actually quite intimate due to its small size.

“I’m in the capstone class now and there’s three people including me,” said Hannah. “But, because of that, when you find another humanities majors you’re instant best friends.”

And while there are a number of people who may dismiss the humanities major because they don’t know very much about it, Hannah shared that the things she has learned because of her major have already helped her in academic and professional settings.

After having taken a poetry class with Dr. Henry Hughes last year, Hannah remarked, “I had worked on the craft of poetry and so I felt more confident entering the Peter Sears contest. So, I entered the contest and I wound up winning first place. And that was a really cool experience for me as a writer.”

In addition to her scholarly work, Hannah has also proven that she can be successful in the workforce with the help of her major.

“People kind of write humanities off, but I’ve gotten several jobs,” said Hannah. “I’ve worked at a publishing company for a while as an internship, I work at the Writing Center right now and it is, without exaggeration, the best job I’ve ever had.”

Looking to the future, Hannah is set to complete her undergraduate degree at the end of Fall Term and to begin her MAT at Western in the Winter Cohort.

“It’s exciting to see where that goes because I never would have done that had I not taken the classes that I took and been around the professors that I was around,” said Hannah. “Humanities is something that transfers over to a lot of other areas, so regardless of what you’re interested in, humanities gives you a really good start.”

For any students who would like to learn more about the humanities major, information can be found on Western’s website at wou.edu/humanities.

Contact the author at howlnews@wou.edu

Photo courtesy of Bailey Thompson