DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES

The Department of Humanities has been recently established at the School of Social Sciences & Humanities (S3H). It is a very diverse department which is home to English, Islamic Studies & Pakistan Studies, History and Cultural Studies faculty.  Our faculty is a community of dedicated scholars and teachers whose research expands the boundaries of our knowledge and imagination, and whose teaching prepares students for wide-ranging careers and lifelong learning.

We begin from the fundamental conviction that humanities are a critical component of liberal arts education. In an increasingly interconnected and fast-changing world, our students need a grasp of what it means to understand other cultures as well as their own, and they need the critical and interdisciplinary skills that the Humanities contribute as part of a liberal arts education. Universities have become increasingly identified in the public mind with mere vocational training, but a supple education in the arts and humanities is a good investment in the modern environment. Most of our students will have had not just two or three different jobs by the time they retire, but two or three different careers, and the transferable skills of humanistic studies—flexibility, adaptability, critical analysis, clear oral and written communication— are solid preparation for the uncertain future.

As a field, the humanities remain out of favor in Pakistan, both in the public imagination and in academia, but evidence from the last three decades indicates that, despite the decline in status, interest in the humanities has been rising.  With a boom in the number of PhDs, foreign-educated academics, and authors writing about Pakistan from home and abroad, the humanities have been enriched by cutting-edge research and innovative literary works. The main areas that this work has helped address are the ethnic imbalance in society, the disparity of access to power between the genders, the state’s absence in its duties toward minorities, and Western Islamophobic representations of Pakistan. These trends show that the state of the humanities in Pakistan is complicated. While the overall trend is one of decline, institutional and market demands have ensured that the humanities cannot be altogether ignored. The more polarized society becomes, the greater the role that the humanities must play. Yet, no government seems cognizant of the part that the humanities can play in the reformation, reconfiguration, and reorientation of Pakistani society. No government has presented a vision to channel the humanities as a social project. The relative growth of the humanities across other noteworthy alma-maters in the country indicates, however, that there is space for this discipline to grow and find greater acceptance in Pakistan.

It is in this context that we proposed the launch of a BS program in Liberal Arts and Humanities at S3H. A liberal arts education offers an expansive intellectual grounding in all kinds of humanistic inquiry. By exploring issues, ideas and methods across the humanities and the arts, and the natural and social sciences, our students will learn to read critically, write cogently and think broadly. These skills will elevate their conversations in the classroom and strengthen social and cultural analysis; they will cultivate the tools necessary to allow them to navigate the world’s most complex issues. The proposed program offers a combination of courses in Liberal Arts and Humanities.

Employment opportunities of Humanities graduates are projected to grow at a rapid pace over the next ten years worldwide. The demand of Research and Development in this field is also high.  International /Local industries that are involved in job placement of Liberal arts students after graduation include   academia, policymaking,  politics, media, corporate sector, third sector, government, international organizations: UNDP, British Council, UNFPA, USAID, ICA, and Swiss Aid  as well as private consultancy.