Humanities Courses at Vanier College

Humanities offers students the opportunity to contemplate and better understand and appreciate questions that pertain to the human condition. Courses are multidisciplinary in approach and are offered in three general, thematic categories: knowledge, world views and ethics. Students must take one course in each category to earn their DCS.

Humanities courses

In Humanities courses, students will explore big questions that have been the focus of human thought, inquiry and debate for millennia: What makes up our identity? How should we live? What are the true meanings of human actions? How can we understand our reality? What does it mean to say one “knows” something? Within the general frame of the three categories, teachers design courses with a view to examining particular and everyday issues relating, among other things, to the environment, gender, war and conflict, racism and difference, artistic creation and media roductions and imagery. Students are encouraged to learn through in-class discussion, exchange of ideas and opinion and group work, but also through structured inquiry and the study of influential and enduring works of philosophical thought, literary creation, artistic creation, social commentary and critique, visual production and so on, as it pertains to the human condition.

Cégep students must complete three courses in Humanities as part of the General Education requirement of their DEC program: two courses from a list of BLOCK “A” courses, and one course from a list of BLOCK “B” courses adapted to their program of study.

Block A

Among the Block “A” courses, students choose one course from the World Views category (3 hours per week), and one from the Knowledge category (4 hours per week).

Students are strongly advised to take their Block “A” courses in their first year of study.

All courses in Block “A”, although different from one another in subject matter, will use a multidisciplinary approach and will target common competencies.

The common learning objectives for the World Views courses are:
To apply a critical thought process to world views.

Elements of the competency:

To describe world views.
To explain the major ideas, values, and implications of a world view.
To organize the ideas, values and experiences of a world view into cohercoherent patterns.
To compare world views.
To convey the ideas, attitudes, and experiences of the societies or groups studied.

The common learning objectives for the Knowledge courses are:
To apply a logical analytical process to how knowledge is organized and used.

Elements of the competency:

To recognize the basic elements of a field of knowledge.
To define the modes of organization and utilization of a field of knowledge.
To situate a field of knowledge within its historical context.
To organize the main components into coherent patterns.
To produce a synthesis of the main components.

Humanities department

Humanities courses

Block A

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