Welcome to Faculty of Humanities and Letters!
‘The humanities,’ said the American critic, Ronald Crane, ‘are those disciplines that deal with the aspects of human experience that make us most human and therefore differentiates us from animals’. Central to these aspects of human experience is the ability of man to express himself in unique and unpredictable ways, in ways that in the end form our culture. Basic to human self-expression is language and language in its various forms has always been at the centre of attention in the humanities. But man also expresses himself through the various non-verbal arts and through cultural artefacts. All these are the objects of study in the humanities. However, the humanities cannot be characterized in terms of their objects of study alone. Equally important is aim and approach. For the humanities aim at an understanding, appreciation, and use of these objects that preserve their character as human expressions. And this is what the study of the humanities at Bilkent is all about.