Barnard College - Mortarboard Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 22 text:

To our way of thinking, Barnard is and should always be a liberal arts college. The spirit of the Humanities should permeate every part of the cam- pus. There should be a concerted effort to explore each area of study in relation to the total body of knowledge. Barnard offers a wide range of oppor- tunities to any student who wants to share in this fas- cinating process of exploration. The curriculum is de- signed to offer everyone a grounding in ' Humanities ' i n view of its important role. The Humanities must try to give us the rationale for all we do and attempt to do. It is in this respect that they are essentially creative. It can also be fairly stated that all the disciplines included within this title are basically interpretive. This is true of even the more actively productive endeavors, painting and literary composition, for example, since they present only selected features of the world. The artist interprets as he discriminates between the more and less important. Those seemingly non-crea- tive pursuits, criticism and analysis, help explain and give coherence to the whole range of experience by the process of refining and unifying. Our civilization has advanced to the stage where we have realized the importance of interpretation. That we come to appreciate the interpretive process, its manifestations and its goal, is likewise a matter of great urgency.