Mar 29, 2024  
2018-19 Graduate Catalog 
    
2018-19 Graduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

HU 525 The Philadelphia Seminar


This course gives students in the M.A.H. program a privileged and enlightening experience of the greater Philadelphia region as a place where the humanities are not merely studied, but actively practiced. Its premise is that the humanities are all living disciplines that both celebrate past achievements and engage in today’s world, producing new works and new forms of humanistic understanding.

Students in the Philadelphia Seminar not only experience the area’s cultural riches, but also meet with the movers and shakers at the institutions, gaining firsthand knowledge of how the humanities are practiced in this great urban center.

During recent versions of the course, seminar participants did the following:

  • Attended a Vox Ama Deus concert at the Perelman Theatre at the Kimmel Center.
  • Enjoyed a walking tour of Philadelphia’s historic district, inspecting the Betsy Ross House, Carpenter’s Hall, Christ Church, the old Quaker Meeting House, Franklin Court, and other iconic sites.
  • Spent a morning at Chanticleer, a famous garden and arboretum in Wayne, followed by a visit to the Baldwin Book Barn, a one-of-a-kind bookstore that is both a historic institution and a thriving second-hand book business.
  • Took the adults-only Centennial Tour of the new Please Touch Museum in Fairmount Park, Housed in Centennial Hall, the only building still standing from the 1876 Exhibition.
  • Attended an impressive performance of Macbeth at the Wilma Theater.
  • Traveled to Doylestown to tour the Michener and Mercer museums, Fonthill, and the Moravian Tile Works.