Updated: History and English remain largest humanities departments, foreign languages the smallest

269 members of the Class of 2015 declared concentrations in the humanities by the end of the sophomore major declaration period on Tuesday, compared with the 286 sign-ins last year.

The humanities majors with the highest number of concentrators are history, with 78 sign-ins, and English, with 46. English department representative Sophie Gee explained that because the English department usually has people join during the spring and summer, the number of English concentrators will probably rise to somewhere around the same as last year. 48 sophomores joined the department last spring, and there are currently 51 junior English concentrators.

History department representative Yaacob Dweck attributed the large number of people majoring in history both this year and last year to an “extraordinary faculty with an extraordinary range of interests.” The department received 75 majors last year but currently has 78 juniors.

Humanities majors with the lowest enrollment are foreign languages, including Slavic languages and literatures, German, French and Italian and Spanish and Portuguese. Each of these departments has six concentrators. Last year for the Class of 2014, Slavic languages and literatures received four concentrators, German received six, French and Italian received nine and Spanish and Portuguese received two concentrators.

Overall, the number of concentrators in each humanities department has not varied significantly from last year, with many departments showing very small decreases in declarations this year. Music had 10 sophomore concentrators and comparative literature had 22, compared to the 12 and 25 sophomores last year, respectively. Religion showed a slight decrease to 15 concentrators from 17 last year.

The two departments showing larger decreases are philosophy, with a drop from 28 concentrators to 22, and the Architecture School, whose concentrators have decreased from 20 to 10.

Mario Gandelsonas, department representative for the Architecture School, could not be reached for comment by press time.

Kassandra Leiva ’15, who is concentrating in the architecture department, said that the small department size did not adversely affect her decision. None of the larger majors interested her very much, she said.

“I really like the feeling of a smaller department because it’s much more personalized and each of the professors seem a lot more important to me,” she said.

Philosophy department representative John Burgess cited a possible link between the decline in numbers of philosophy concentrators and the possibility of open enrollment in the Wilson School.

“I myself personally have only spoken to two students who were considering our department and decided to go into WWS,” Burgess said, adding that at least one of them would have been a philosophy concentrator and done the Wilson School certificate had the School not discontinued its certificate program. Burgess added that there may have been other students debating between philosophy and the Wilson School who did not speak to him.

Burgess also expressed concern about the decline in philosophy concentrators for this year. “We’re not happy,” he said, “but it’s something we will discuss at the end of the year.”

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Although the number of sophomores concentrating in language departments is small compared to the larger humanities majors such as history and English, some departments welcomed a relatively large class of concentrators. Even though the German department has six concentrators, this number is actually quite large, department representative Christiane Frey said. She noted that the number of majors two years ago was almost one-third the number of sophomores that joined the department this year.

Frey added that it is hard to say whether the success of her department can be attributed to theMajor Choices initiative, which encourages a more even distribution of students among departments. Former Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel introduced the initiative in part due to a worry that students were being pressured to join the University's larger departments, such as economics or history. Frey said she believed that current German majors have chosen their concentration on their own initiative.

Other possible causes for the growth of interest in German include the rising prevalence of German culture due to the German economy and the situation in Europe, Frey said.

Leiva explained that the commonly voiced concern about humanities majors’ inability to find jobs also did not play a major role in her decision. She noted that this concern was a worrying thought at first, given that architecture does better at great times in the economy.

“However, I really like the major itself,” she said, “so that really doesn’t make much of a difference right now.”

16 sophomores declared Classics this year, up from 11 last year. The department of art and archaeology received 14 sophomore concentrators this year, down its count of 21 last year. The departments of East Asian Studies and Near Eastern Studies each received 12 new concentrators, while last year they received 11 and 16 respectively.

Senior writer Lydia Lim contributed to reporting.