Welcome to the Bilkent Faculty of Humanities and Letters
 
Our primary goal in the Faculty of Humanities and Letters is to introduce our students to the many and diverse worlds of meaning, thought, experience, and imagination that men and women have produced and lived throughout the course of human history. We do this by closely reading the texts and carefully examining the cultural artifacts created within varied cultural and historical contexts. Proceeding in this manner, we aim to encourage our students to engage themselves actively and critically with these texts and cultural artifacts, thus widening their intellectual and imaginative horizons. From the artifacts excavated from ancient civilizations, through the philosophical and literary texts of Classical Antiquity, to treatises on politics and philosophy written by Early Modern

thinkers such as Descartes and Machiavelli, to contemporary fiction, poetry, and visual culture, we work with our students and with our colleagues to understand and interpret the meanings embedded in these cultural productions and their contexts. Combining the departments of Archaeology, English Language and Literature, American Culture and Literature, Turkish Literature, Philosophy, Translation and Interpretation, along with the program in Civilization, Cultures, and Ideas into one faculty, we encourage interdisciplinary approaches to the Humanities.

Our faculty members are dedicated to research as well as to teaching, and has been trained in major North American, European, and Turkish universities. We offer B.A. degrees to our students, as well as graduate degrees in some departments. We aim to foster language and communication skills, including rigorous reading and writing skills, inter-cultural sensitivities, and critical and analytic thinking abilities, in our students. All of these skills, sensitivities, and abilities will, we believe, be of great value in preparing our students for their lives and careers in a globalized world.