The College of Humanities offers a core curriculum in humanities. There are three levels of objectives guiding the architecture of this core curriculum. On the first level, it is to equip students with language skills in Chinese, English and other foreign languages. On the second level, it is to provide students with abilities to analyze and think independently and systematically. On the third level, it is to increase the awareness of the diversity of the world, complexity of human conditions, and richness of human expressions throughout the history of the human race. Study in humanities thus furnishes students with a set of abilities to learn from the successes and failures of others and profit from the richness and variety of human experience over time and space. In addition, in conjunction with the core curriculum in science offered through the College of Sciences, this college also contributes in no small measure to the core curriculum of general liberal education in this university.

　

     The curricula of the college focus on literature, history, philosophy, and languages and linguistics. Literature presents humanities courses that illustrate how human beings express their experience of the world through novels and poems. Historical study adopts both macroscopic and microscopic views for the development and evolution of human conditions. Philosophy poses general questions concerning reality, knowledge, reasoning, language, and conduct. In the area of languages and linguistics, in addition to the courses that provide instruction to develop the skills in Chinese, English and several foreign languages, they include linguistic study of the practical and theoretical foundations of human language in general.

　 

     Literature courses are taught both in the Department of Chinese Literature and the Department of Foreign Literature and Languages. Most of them focus on the forms of human expression in historical context, touching on history, philosophy and languages and linguistics. While most of the courses in historical study are offered through the Department of History, many courses offered through the Department of Chinese Literature and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature also are germane to historical study of languages and cultures in the East as well as the West. The core courses offered by the Department of Philosophy aim to develop students' ability in analytic, logical, and systematic thinking. They are also indispensable for deeper understanding of literature, history, languages and linguistic study.