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American Studies, Art, Art History and Archaeology, Classics, College of Arts and Humanities, Communication, English, History, Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Program and Center for Jewish Studies, Linguistics, Philosophy, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, School of Music, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

2026 ARHU Commencement: Undergraduate Ceremony

We look forward to celebrating the important milestone of commencement with our graduates, their families and friends and our faculty and staff.

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Arts for All, Roshan Institute for Persian Studies, School of Music

UMD Professor’s Poem Becomes Play-Opera About Women in Prison

Inspired by real accounts, “For Women Serving Time” opens March 20 at Dupont Underground.

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College of Arts and Humanities, English

Professor Emerita Merle Collins Recovers Overlooked Life of Louise Little

Collins received the Barbara T. Christian Literary Award for “Ocean Stirrings.”

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What interests you?

learning about...

a career in...

Whatever your interests and aspirations, ARHU is committed to providing the knowledge, skills and opportunities all our students need to write their own stories and chart their own paths.

"In ARHU, you’re learning about how people interact with the world and each other. My goal is to build things that people are going to use. Just technology knowledge can only go so far. You have to understand how people are going to use them to be truly successful."

Ozzie Fallick '14, Software Engineer, Google
Linguistics

"Cross-cultural communication is one of the most important skills that I learned at ARHU, and I use it to engage and inform the community in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean about our events, exchanges and any other information that supports our key policy priorities in the region. ARHU gave me the tools to understand why in diplomacy, it’s as much about what you say as how you say it."

Krystle Norman '08, Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Department of State
Spanish and Portuguese

"I had always loved art, but I never knew you could make a career out of it until I studied abroad in Rome. There, I took a full course load of art courses and learned all about the factors of being an art professional. It was life-changing. Now I feel lucky that I’m doing something that I’m so passionate about."

Laura Sheridan Raiffe '09, Regional Account Manager, Christie's Fine Arts
Art History and Archaeology

"One of the most important things I got out of my ARHU experience is my ability to parse arguments, think critically and see multiple sides of an issue. Being in law school, it’s important to do that—it’s a skill I use every day. Not a class goes by, not a case gets read that this skill doesn’t come into play."

AJ Clayborne '13, Student, Harvard Law School
English

GRAND CHALLENGES

DEMAND FEARLESS IDEAS

The research and creative works of our faculty, students and alumni are setting the agenda for transformative dialogue about the value of the arts and the humanities in the world today.

Research Highlights

New Scholarship from The College of Arts and Humanities

Explore Our Research

Happening at ARHU

Our Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Research, Trevor Parry-Giles, talks about three books by ARHU faculty that are engaging some of the most urgent questions of our time around power, protest, empire and identity. In "In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan," Alicia Volk examines the artistic production of postwar Japan, drawing on extensive archival research to reveal how artists navigated the American occupation while redefining modern art. In "No Justice, No Peace: The Ethics of Violent Protests," Avia Pasternak offers a philosophical analysis of political violence, questioning the moral assumptions that shape public responses to protest movements and asking how violence functions in contexts of systemic injustice. In "Extravagant Camp: The Queer Abjection of Asian America," Chris Eng explores how queer Asian American artists use camp as both aesthetic practice and critical method, using performance, humor and excess to confront histories of exclusion and reimagine cultural belonging. These books demonstrate how humanities scholarship not only interprets the past but also provides critical frameworks for understanding the present and envisioning more just futures.
That One Professor. You know the one. Nominate that faculty member for a Donna B. Hamilton Teaching Award. Based on student nominations, the Office of Undergraduate Studies will recognize two faculty members for excellence in teaching. Nominations close April 1 at 5 p.m. 🔗 in profile!
This Women’s History Month, we turned to the University Archives @umdlibraries to learn more about some of the first women to study humanities disciplines in the then-School of Liberal Arts, which began offering classes at Maryland State College (later the University of Maryland) in 1919. Women had only recently been admitted to Maryland State College, first enrolling in 1916, though access at the time was limited to white women. Sidnia “Syd” Butler made history as the first woman to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1922. After transferring to Maryland as a senior in 1921—having completed earlier studies at Randolph-Macon and the University of Vermont—Butler went on to build a career in retail advertising in Boston, working with companies including Gilchrist, Shepard Stores and the Leopold Morse Company, where she became an advertising manager. She was also a member of the Boston Advertising Club. She died in 1942 at age 42, leaving behind a husband, a son and a large extended family. We honor her legacy as one of the first women to study the humanities at Maryland. Today, more than 60% of ARHU graduates are women—just over a century after “Syd” was the first. 📷: Sidnia Butler from the 1922 yearbook. #WomensHistory #WomensHistoryMonth

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