Each semester, the Graduate Humanities Program engages the intersection of the arts, literature, culture, and history within an open, exploratory, and experimental educational environment.
Students enrolled in the Graduate Humanities Program explore broad interdisciplinary issues through a diverse array of course offerings. Most of these are offered in a virtual seminar format: discussion-based graduate-level courses focused on reading, open and regular dialogue, collaborative and interactive interpretation, research and writing.
While several seminars are discipline-specific (our core curriculum, for example), most are designed to go beyond individual disciplines and enlist students in the cross-disciplinary study of the humanities.
Click on the links below for registration information for individual seminars. You can find general registration information on the MU Registrar website.
For previous seminar schedules, see our “Previous GHP Seminar Schedules” site.
Before joining any of our seminars, familiarize yourself with the Program’s Seminar Rules of Engagement.
Spring 2025
CULS 600: Selected Topics – Appalachian Studies Research, Arranged (VIRTUAL) (contact Director)
For students enrolled in the Appalachian Studies Certificate who are working on research projects in the Appalachian region. Registration by permission only. Contact the Director.
CULS 611: Appalachian Studies: Themes & Voices (VIRTUAL) (Pleska), Mondays, 7 – 9:50 PM
This interdisciplinary course orients students to the significant issues and research in Appalachian studies. Important political, social, and cultural issues will be considered. Research areas are introduced.
- Cat Pleska holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. She is a 7th generation West Virginian and her memoir, Riding on Comets, was published in 2015 by WVU Press. She is a former book reviewer and radio essayist, and is currently working on a collection of travel/personal essays, The I’s Have It: Travels in Ireland and Iceland.
HUMN 603: History and Theory of the Arts (VIRTUAL) (Lassiter), Thursdays, 7 – 9:50 PM
Core course provides chronological survey of the arts, emphasizing the social, political and/or religious motives that underlie artistic production.
- Luke Eric Lassiter is director of the Graduate Humanities Program and professor of humanities and anthropology.
HUMN 650: SelTp: Non-Profits in Appalachia (VIRTUAL) (Hatfield), Tuesdays, 7 – 9:50 PM
Non-profits are organizations formed for religious, charitable, scientific, literary, or educational purposes. Students taking this course will examine the history of non-profits and explore the local and regional field of practice using a process called Appreciative Inquiry.
- Trish Hatfield is the Assistant Director of the Graduate Humanities Program. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from West Virginia Wesleyan College. She is the editor of Graduate Humanities, our Program newsletter in its 46th year of publication; a co-author of the award-winning I’m Afraid of that Water: A Collaborative Ethnography of a West Virginia Water Crisis, and editor of the recently published Octopus, Elephant, Beehive: An Appreciative Inquiry into a Thriving Step By Step, among other works.
HUMN 680 – Independent Research Symposium, Arranged (contact Director)
A pro-seminar required of all Humanities degree students who are beginning the thesis or final project. Arranged with the Program Director.