The “humanities” is an umbrella term used to refer to those university disciplines concerned with human culture and values – including history, philosophy, literature, languages, the arts, music and drama. Yet these disciplines and their relationship have themselves a rich and evolving history within the institution of the university. This course introduces you to this history, from the Early Modern studia humanitatis to their establishment as different disciplines in the nineteenth-century research university to the various challenges the humanities faced in the latter half of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This genealogy provides you with an understanding of the diverse and divergent assumptions and objectives of research in the humanities and the numerous paradigm shifts they underwent. We discuss the humanities in relation to the modern sciences and their claims to objectivity as well as in relation to the ancient traditions of self-knowledge and self-improvement. The aim is to allow you to situate your own research, both historically and in a cross-disciplinary context.