When industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman founded the School, he stressed the importance of training professional musicians to the highest performance standards, while providing them with a liberal education in a rich academic environment. The Eastman School expects all of its students to partake in a variety of academic disciplines, to develop strong intellectual perspectives, and to be able to voice these convincingly.

The undergraduate humanities curriculum enables students to reflect intelligently on their place in contemporary culture, and prepares them to assume roles of principled cultural leadership. Humanities department faculty offer courses in which students read widely, think critically, and learn to write effectively in a broad range of disciplines, including anthropology, English literature, history, religion, foreign languages and literatures, philosophy, American studies, women’s studies, and film. Undergraduates majoring in musical arts choose a coherent concentration of courses from humanities, natural and social sciences, and music, as part of the curriculum for their major.

The humanities department encourages interested undergraduates to take advantage of courses offered in the College at the University of Rochester’s River Campus. Graduate students, too, are urged to take courses through other schools of the University of Rochester. These include the College, the Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, and the Simon School of Business.