Academic Programs

Anthropology’s distinctive way of studying the world through ethnographic fieldwork provides key insights into how diverse individuals and communities experience gender, race, class and other hierarchies in their daily lives, and how they challenge those hierarchies. Anthropology not only provides a diagnosis for the present, but also offers possible solutions to our pressing human problems.

The Arabic Program offers elementary, intermediate and advanced level language courses. You will hone your language skills through small group practice sessions with a native Arabic speaking foreign language assistant and complement your classroom learning with culturally rich programs offered throughout the semester.

The rich cultural resources of New England and the greater Northeast form an integral part of our department’s curriculum, offering our students abundant learning, community engagement and internship opportunities.

The practice of art history provides both cognitive and discursive skills to probe past developments and confront those of the present. Through the close study of objects and sites, you'll come to an understanding of the individuals, social contexts and material realities of the past and how this informs the present day.

Led by faculty from disciplines across the curriculum with teaching and research expertise in the Asian region, we offer a major and a minor, and sponsor activities and events beyond the classroom — often in collaboration with other academic departments and divisions. You will have the flexibility to explore your interests through courses in disciplines such as anthropology, economics, history, World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, music, philosophy, political science, religious studies and theatre.

Catholic Studies offers a rigorous, interdisciplinary approach to Catholic society and culture. You can design your own major or minor across multiple disciplines to pursue a curriculum that suits your interests and passion. Engaging with individual advisors and expert faculty in classics, English, history, World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, philosophy, religious studies, sociology and visual arts, you can enrich your personal and career goals with the strength of purpose and moral formation that come from Catholic learning.

The Chinese Studies program offers up to five years of Mandarin Chinese language courses, in addition to courses that explore Chinese literature, cinema and culture through a range of disciplines. Optional practice sessions are offered by Chinese foreign language assistants, who reinforce classroom lessons while simultaneously offering an authentic and contemporary window into Chinese culture.

We actively welcome students from a variety of backgrounds and those without any prior experience in computer science. Computer scientists study fundamental questions about knowledge and computation: How to gather, store, transform and learn from information. Computational thinking permeates nearly every modern human endeavor, and computing plays a key role in recent advances in mathematics, natural sciences, economics and many other fields.

The Creative Writing Program offers students the opportunity to pursue fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Our courses expose students to contemporary literature, teach them to read like writers, and allow them to explore countless approaches to telling stories, crafting images, and developing an ear for language.

Because racial justice is a collective struggle that calls us to be people for and with others, students of all backgrounds are welcome in CRES. Students customize their own curricular plan by choosing a track of courses focused on race and ethnicity from a wide variety of disciplines, including literature, history, sociology, anthropology, classics, religious studies, the arts and other departments at the College. Students gain racial literacy and intercultural sensitivity on a wide variety of topics. They are encouraged to ask their own pressing questions on racial inequality and research topics they are passionate about. CRES encourages students to seek classroom and cocurricular opportunities that provide relevant knowledge and experience for their future careers.

Our dance courses are grounded in an understanding of dance history, as well as technique and composition.

Beyond the classroom, the program offers opportunities for cultural and language immersion through cocurricular activities and community-based learning initiatives.

Mentored by renowned faculty who utilize their scholarship to impact the local community, you will complement your coursework with related field-based experiences as early as your first year. The faculty are dedicated to providing students with an excellent classroom experience while remaining active in community schools and in discussions about education at the national level.

A rich selection of courses will help you explore both our urban and wild surroundings as you investigate sustainability and environmental justice, as well as the relationships between humans and other living things.

Business is the primary source of goods and services, of course, but it has also become a primary source of employment, opportunity, wealth and security. The Minor in Ethics, Society and the Institution of Business (ESIB) invites you to explore and question all of this, and to draw your own conclusions about the role of business in a just, flourishing and sustainable society.

Aiming for both breadth and depth, students develop a sophisticated reading of individual movies. It also offers survey and advanced classes in film that offer a variety of approaches: genre, theme, culture, narrative, cinema and history, and the work of individual filmmakers. Classes in (theatrical) direction and photography that both theoretical and hands-on explorations of filmmaking are also offered to students.

The French curriculum is designed to provide you with linguistic proficiency as well as an understanding of French and Francophone literatures and cultures.

By studying geosciences at Holy Cross you will learn about the history of the earth, earth materials and resources, climate change, water on land and in the oceans and natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes and floods.

You will not only learn this widely spoken language, but also study German literature and culture through rich courses and a variety of cultural programs.

Both in the classroom and beyond, Italian Studies offers rich courses and diverse opportunities for cultural immersion. Whether you declare a major or minor, you will gain a broader understanding of the Italian literary tradition and culture and learn to think and write critically as you master a different language.

The program allows you to design an interdisciplinary major or minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, drawing on collegewide offerings in three or more fields. As an era when rival religions competed for minds and hearts, states took form and writers and artists developed vernacular idioms, this period offers a model for contemporary study of the interaction of cultures.

Through a combination of course work and extracurricular activities, this self-designed program allows you to explore the region's culture, history and politics through a multidisciplinary approach. This program emphasizes the integration of various disciplines to provide a comprehensive understanding of the Middle East.

Our program takes a unique, integrative approach to undergraduate neuroscience education. Students are encouraged to develop a broad base of foundational knowledge and skills across STEM disciplines, which is then applied as students acquire a deep understanding of principles, techniques and unanswered questions in neuroscience. The program aims to support and enhance student learning across the sciences, mathematics and philosophy, showing students explicit links between neuroscience and contributing disciplines. Students are thus empowered to develop the critical thinking and problem solving skills needed to confront complex challenges.

At its core, philosophy is the ability to think reflectively and critically about questions at the very foundation of human existence. You will learn how to approach problems imaginatively, explore what might appear to be self-evident and appreciate the ethical implications of decisions and actions.

Physics works to answer the question “why?” — why do objects fall to the ground? Why do we see rainbow colors on the surface of soap bubbles? In learning to answer the question of why, a study of physics at Holy Cross gives students a broad yet detailed knowledge of the physical sciences, provides students with mathematical and analytical skills, trains students in advanced laboratory techniques and teaches students scientific computing methods.

As an academic institution committed to diversity with a mission to think critically, we offer a range of courses that enable you to understand and appreciate your own particular religious tradition, to situate that tradition in the wider context of other world religions and to discover how diverse religious beliefs and practices are relevant to global concerns.

Designed for students who want to strengthen their ability to analyze and produce impactful communication, this minor prepares you to excel in careers that demand strong writing, critical thinking and rhetorical skills.

The interdisciplinary curriculum of Russian and Eastern European Studies will allow you to develop a broader understanding of this culturally rich and politically crucial region from a variety of perspectives. Through courses in history, culture, politics, economics and language, the program offers an opportunity for you to gain background essential to understanding contemporary issues ranging from Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, to current German-Russian cooperation in the construction of a Nord Stream Gas Pipeline and the future of the European Union.

The Russian Studies Program courses, major, and minor are designed to be interdisciplinary — combining the study of Russia’s art and culture with its language, history, religious traditions, geography and more.

Our statistics minor teaches a way of thinking that identifies patterns in data and draws inferences from those patterns. We focus on developing students’ understanding of how and why statistical techniques work as well as developing skill in applying them in modern software packages.

Classes are “hands-on,” emphasizing experimenting with materials and acquiring technical and conceptual skills. The department encourages active exhibition of student work through ongoing shows in galleries on campus.

The program raises key questions regarding issues of diversity and inclusion, both in terms of course content as well as student and faculty involvement, and invites us to explore how gender, sexuality and race have informed the construction and experience of the urban world. Individualized programs based on a faculty-designed template guide students to make new connections across disciplinary boundaries across the College and beyond.