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The Program
MAPH’s own larger intellectual project is to provide the Humanities Division of one of the world’s great universities with a context for practical reflection about the power, critical edge, and significance of contemporary humanistic inquiry.
While many American academic institutions began life as colleges or seminaries and gradually grew into universities, the founders of the University of Chicago designed it as a great center of higher learning from the first. Ambitious, optimistic about the power of thought to shape practice and direct progress, devoted to upholding intellectual standards without stifling intellectual autonomy, they set to work establishing an institution in which excellence in research dominated all other concerns. The central division of the new University, known as "the University Proper," had clearly delineated pedagogic functions meant to realize a vision of the place of academic education in the US. The college provided two years of common, unusually demanding liberal arts and scientific study followed by two years of specialized work undertaken in order to prepare for graduate school. Most of the energies of the University were directed to graduate work. The University of Chicago was unique in its devotion to graduate education. Graduate students far outnumbered undergraduates. They still do.
The early twenty-first century has brought new demands from established professionals and general intellectuals, from specialists in transition and recent graduates preparing for doctoral work. MAPH is crucial to the University's work toward continuing its traditional commitment to academic rigor while meeting these new demands.
MAPH’s own larger intellectual project is to provide the Humanities Division of one of the world’s great universities with a context for practical reflection about the power, critical edge, and significance of contemporary humanistic inquiry. MAPH sponsors curricular projects and special events serving the larger University of Chicago community, addressing a wide range of issues relevant to the requirements of academic life, the role of humanistic training in various extra-academic professions, and the place of humanists in public culture.
In all of these respects, MAPH’s mission is continuous with the mission of the University of Chicago.
