Humanities are disciplines which study the human condition using methods which are analytical, critical or speculative. They are mainly distinguished from the empirical approaches of the natural and social sciences. The discipline of humanities consists of ancient and modern languages, literature, history, philosophy, religion, visual and performing arts, music. It sometimes even includes anthropology, area studies, communications and cultural studies.

The arts are usually considered as a branch of humanities. These have visual arts like paintings and sculpture and performing arts like dance, literature and theatre.

The traditions of art have roots in the arts of the ancient civilizations like:

• Ancient Egypt
• Greece and Rome
• China
• India
• Mesopotamia
• Mesoamerica

The veneration of the human physical form and the development of skills to show muscular details, beauty and anatomically perfect proportions was a part of the Greek art. Romans depicted gods as idealized humans with characteristic features.

In the Middle Ages during the Byzantine and gothic periods the dominant power of the church insisted on the expression of biblical truths and not material ones. The renaissance saw the return of the material expression and the corporeality of the human form and three-dimensional landscape. Eastern art is generally akin to the western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning and local color. This is evident in the art of India, Tibet and Japan. Religious Islamic art forbids iconography and the art expressions are developed through pure forms and geometry strictly.

Drawing is defined as the technique of making an image using any of a wide variety of tools and methods. It involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool or moving it across a surface. An artist who excels in drawing is known as a draftsman. The technique of applying pigment which is suspended in a carrier or a medium and a binding agent to a surface such as paper, canvas or wall is known as painting. It combines the artistic aesthetics of drawing, composition and the overall theme. As is sound the essence of music so is color to painting.

Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include many contemporary methods which began with the advent to various movements like cubism.

The performing arts differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artists own body, face and presence as a medium and the latter uses materials which can be molded or transformed to create some object of art. It includes acrobatics, dance, comedy, music, film, theatre, magic etc. artists who perform these arts in front of an audience are known as performers.

Art is that which is made with the intention of stimulating the human mind and the senses. The impetus of art is called human creativity. An artwork is normally assessed in quality by the kind of stimulation that it evokes. The influence and the impact that it has on the number of people who can relate to it and their degree of appreciation are some of the criteria that can judge art pieces. Most of the widely considered master pieces are possess these attributes. There a distinct classification between what we traditionally know as the fine art and the craft. Art that has less functional value or intention may be referred to as fine art whereas objects that have artistic value but also serve functional purposes are referred to as crafts.

The study of humanities can be traced to ancient Greece as a basis for a broad education for the citizens. The bulk of medieval education was focused on the humanities as skills or ways of doing. During the renaissance there was a major shift and the humanities began to be regarded as subjects to be studies rather than practiced. Then in the 20^th century this view was in turn challenged by the postmodernist movement which sought to redefine humanities in more egalitarian terms as being more suitable for a democratic society.

Humanities reflect on the fundamental question – ‘what does it mean to be human?’

It offers many clues but never a complete answer. It reveals how people have tried to make moral, spiritual and intellectual sense of a world in which irrationality, despair, loneliness and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope and reason.

The concept of humanities as a class or kind which is distinct from the traditional sciences has come under repeated attacks in the 20^th century. Postmodernists like Edward said argue that the humanities should go beyond the study of dead white males to include works by women and people of color, without any religious bias. A French philosopher Michel Foucault stated in his work The Order of Things that “we can study only individuals, not human nature.” Language and literature are considered to be the central topics in the study of humanities. Thus the impact of electronic communication is of great concern to those in the field. Despite the fact that the humanities will have to adapt to the changing forms of communications and information it is highly unlikely that the traditional forms of literature will be abandoned.

Humanities courses study people, their accumulated knowledge over the history of human evolution and their historical achievements and failures. These courses are multi-disciplinary, drawing on different disciplines and counterbalancing the specialization before university and other career programs. They introduce students to major questions of life by studying issues of social, moral and aesthetic values. These courses nowadays are highly valued by high tech industries that argue that they cannot build the digital economy with technology graduates alone and they need people who know how to communicate, to sell, and to relate to work as a part of a team. Graduates of humanities courses are valued for their creativity and broader skills. They seek to help students recognize and cultivate human values and moral sensibilities. They help students prepare to face their future lives and careers through well-reasoned decisions and responsible action by arousing in them intellectual curiosity and developing critical values.

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