For 45 years, Caltech's postdoctoral teaching program in the humanities has helped to keep humanities instruction and research at the forefront of the Institute's mission.
Warren Brown, professor of history, has published a new book that examines how ordinary people lived during the European Middle Ages.
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Meet the Humanities Faculty
Assistant Professor of History
Danielle Wiggins
I bring to the classroom complex questions concerning inequality and justice that I've often yet to figure out myself. I invite students to think along with me and, through this collaboration, I equip them with tools to confront the most pressing concerns of our time."
Caltech is a wonderful place to pursue original research; it lets your interests determine the work you do. There is both a tremendous amount of freedom and an extremely high level of expectation, and these two combine to create a terrific intellectual environment that helps scholars generate their best work."
There’s no better place to work on questions about the intersection between art, aesthetics, science, and technology than at Caltech, where students, faculty, scientists, and engineers are working on visual culture all the time—just in a way that we don’t necessarily always think of as visual culture."
In my classes, students learn the craft of the medieval historian: to read closely the often difficult primary sources from medieval Europe; push past but also take into account their perspectives, assumptions, and biases, as much as possible; and to assemble what they have learned into persuasive written arguments."
Professor of English; Dean of Undergraduate Students
Jennifer Jahner
We live in unprecedented times, but I hope that students leave my classes with the recognition that the questions we ask about inquiry, ethics, environment, and art are not new ones. Attention to the past can make us more creative stewards of the present."
The humanities have the practical function of giving students something they wouldn't otherwise have. The humanities classroom is a space where they can take a step back from their scientific work and learn to think about the world in a different way."
When students start learning philosophy, they often feel like the scenarios that philosophers discuss are outlandish and not worth taking seriously. An analysis of science fiction allows students to put these concerns aside and ultimately realize that philosophy is relevant to their lives and to other fields of academic inquiry."
I ask my students to listen to their own assumptions about themselves and the world as they study a broad range of materials that may seem temporally or culturally remote from us."