The School of Humanities is one of the academic units of the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

. Upon the school's opening in 1965, the Division of Humanities was one of the five liberal arts divisions at the campus. Samuel McCulloch was appointed as UC Irvine's founding dean of Humanities in 1963. The School hosts the

Thesaurus Linguae Graecae The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) is a research center at the University of California, Irvine. The TLG was founded in 1972 by Marianne McDonald (a graduate student at the time and now a professor of theater and classics at the University of Ca ...

and the

University of California Humanities Research Institute The University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), is a humanities research institute at the University of California headquartered at the UC Irvine campus. It promotes collaboration and interdisciplinarity through supporting work ...

History

The division of humanities is one of the five liberal arts divisions that opened with the campus in 1965. In 1963, Samuel McCulloch was appointed as the founding dean of UC Irvine Division of Humanities and laid its foundation. He created four departments within the division with 31 faculty members between them. The four departments were: English and Comparative Literature, Foreign Languages and Literature, History, and Philosophy. By 1967, the governing body of UC Irvine turned the five liberal arts divisions into individual schools and the Division of Humanities became the School of Humanities. In 1970 the Humanities Core Course was implemented and there was a focus on strengthening existing Humanities departments for the rest of the 1970s. The school also launched a doctorate in Critical Theory, making UC Irvine the only university in the country to offer a doctorate in the field. In the 1980s, Dean Ken Bailes founded the Organized Research Unit in Critical Theory and brought the system wide University of California Humanities Research Institute to UC Irvine. The School of Humanities expanded throughout the 1990s and 2000s; the Humanities Instructional Building and Humanities Gateway were built and completed the Humanities Quad. The school now has a total of 13 departments and around 20 majors and several interdisciplinary programs. The university opened a Center for Jewish Studies in 2017.

People

Notable faculty

Margaret Gilbert Margaret Gilbert (born 1942) is a British philosopher who contributed to the foundations of the analytic philosophy of social phenomena. She also made substantial contributions to the fields of political philosophy, the philosophy of law, and eth ...

Margaret Gilbert (born 1942) is a British philosopher best known for her founding contributions to the analytic philosophy of social phenomena. *

Duncan Pritchard Duncan Pritchard is the chancellor's professor of philosophy and the director of graduate studies at the University of California, Irvine. He was previously professor of philosophy and chair in epistemology at the University of Edinburgh. His re ...

FRSE is the chancellor's professor of philosophy and the director of graduate studies at the University of California, Irvine. *

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

, French philosopher who was part of the School's faculty from 1986 until shortly before he died in 2004. *

Murray Krieger Murray Krieger (November 27, 1923 – August 5, 2000) was an American literary critic and theorist. He was a professor at the University of Minnesota, the University of Iowa from 1963, and then the University of California, Irvine. In 1999, t ...

, American literary critic and theorist. Krieger was the founder of the School's Critical Theory Institute. *

Barry Siegel Barry Siegel (born September 7, 1949) is an American journalist. He is a former national correspondent for the ''Los Angeles Times'' who won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 2002 for his piece "A Father's Pain, a Judge's Duty, and a ...

, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist is founding director of the school's Literary Journalism Program. *

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (; born James Ngugi; 5January 193828May 2025) was a Kenyan author and academic, who has been described as East Africa's leading novelist and an important figure in modern African literature. Ngũgĩ wrote primarily in Eng ...

, Kenyan writer and academic is founding director of the school's International Center for Writing and Translation.

Deans

*Samuel McCulloch (1963-1969) *Hazard Adams (1970-1972) *William Lillyman (1974-1982) *Kendall Bailes (1982-1985) *Terence Parsons (1985-1991) *Spencer Olin (1992-1996) *Karen Lawrence (1998-2007) *Vicki Ruiz (2008-2012) *Georges Van Den Abbeele (2013–2018) *Tyrus Miller (2018–present)

Rankings

U.S. News & World Report *2017: Best graduate schools for English ranked #17 *2013: Best graduate schools for History ranked #36Rankings and reviews
usnews.com

Notes

External links

University of California, Irvine , School of Humanities websiteUniversity of California, Irvine website

Sources

* {{Authority control

Humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

Humanities education Educational institutions established in 1965 1965 establishments in California