Arts and Humanities
What We Do
The division of Arts and Humanities within the Collins College of Professional Studies integrates theoretical and practical aspects of education. Our hope is for students to emerge as well-rounded individuals with the necessary resources to be personally and professionally successful.
“I sometimes wish I had been educated a Catholic, in order to unite the poetry of religion with its higher principles. Are they necessarily inseparable? Is man [sic] really so much of a philosopher, that he can conceive of truth in its abstract purity, and divest life and the affections of all the aids of the imagination?” -James Fenimore Cooper
In the liberal arts tradition of seeing the indispensability of the imagination to the pursuit of truths visible and invisible, the division of Arts and Humanities within the Collins College of Professional Studies integrates theoretical and practical aspects of education. Our hope is for students to emerge well-rounded individuals with the necessary resources to be personally and professionally successful.
Since the college’s mission is to provide an education that is value oriented and consistent with a St. John’s University grounding in the Catholic community, the division of Arts and Humanities seeks to ask and answer with students some of the fundamental questions of what it means to be human. Comprised of five disciplines—English and Speech, History, Philosophy and Theology— division courses are taught by a talented mix of faculty with liberal arts and professional degrees.
English and Speech course offerings emphasize the Arts and include Literature in a Global Context and Public Speaking as well as Introduction to Pop Culture, Effective Business Writing, and unique electives: Creative Writing; Writing about Music; Literature in Sport; Literature of Satire; Fantasy in Fiction; Tragedy and Comedy; the Novels of Toni Morrison.
History courses situate us as actors and spectators in the drama of time and place. Such historical consciousness is explored in a gamut of courses from the core Emergence of a Global Society to the electives of Contemporary World Issues and African American Community: WWI to the Present.
Philosophy and Theology offers a critical analysis founded on a complementariness of imagination, reason, and faith as is evident in the core courses of Perspectives on Christianity: A Catholic Approach and Philosophy of the Human Person, as well as more advanced courses on the Bible, Mystery of God, Philosophical Theology, World Religion, Religion and Popular Culture, Marriage, Ethics, Logic and Metaphysics.
The division of Arts and Humanities is home to the Liberal Studies Bachelor of Arts wherein an additional referred Liberal Studies (LST) Program helps match undeclared students to majors; a Liberal Arts Associate of Arts; and an exciting Popular Culture minor.
General Informatio:
Kathleen Marks
Associate Professor
CCPS Arts and Humanities Chair
[email protected]
(718) 990 7473
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