It is finished: Reflection on my Humanities Class!

I just finished posting the final grades for my summer course. In my 20th year of teaching, this is one of the best classes I’ve ever taught on the concept of the Good and Fulfilled life. In this Humanities course, we’ve explored five academic disciplines, including philosophy, ethics, art, literature, and contemporary psychology to discover what critics and thinkers across the globe have said about the art of living in contemporary times. The most delightful moments (a moment of intellectual growh and maturity 😊) in the course occurred when we had the opportunity to engage the ideas of these thinkers and to read and reread their writings again so we could do justice to the authorial intent and the application of their thoughts for contemporary living and human relationships.

Fo example, we read classical thinkers from ancient Greece, Asia, Africa, and Europe and studied both religious texts and philosophical traditions, including Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Yoruba philosophy ; and the Abrahamaic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

This class has made me realize how much I enjoy reading classical moral philosophy and ethics, and it also affirmed my unrelenting commitment to interdisciplinary engagement and cross-disciplinary thinking, as well as my dedication to the intellectual growth of my students, that is, cultivating the life of the mind.

I enjoyed reading the students’ final group projects. They were very good and full of intellectual rigor, creativity, and clarity.

I began the class with 24 students; 2 of them dropped, and 18 of them successfully passed the class. I look forward to teaching it again—maybe, next summer 2026. 🎊 🎉