Description

The Project Year (PY) at ECLA is an interdisciplinary humanities programme concentrating on history, literature and philosophy. The programme has two main aims: to cultivate students' understanding of the concerns and methods of those three disciplines, and to initiate students in the fruitful conversation amongst the disciplines.

Students spend half their time on core courses, and divide the rest of their time between electives and a year-long individual project after which the programme is named. The individual project, arranged according to individual background and plans for the future, allows the student to pursue an old interest further, or acquaint him- or her-self seriously with new territory. The work is supervised by faculty members with relevant expertise and culminates with a 25-page essay to be submitted in term 3, as well as an oral presentation of the project to the rest of the school. The PY core course is devoted to value problems, like the AY programme, but with a special focus on methodological issues. Normally PY students have 2-5 years of relevant academic experience when they join the programme. Some have finished the Academy Year Programme; others come to the programme with some experience of value studies from disciplines like philosophy, comparative literature, political theory, theology and art history. Many PY students plan to continue with graduate studies, and in the past four years ECLA has helped place students in some of the best graduate schools, including programmes at Oxford University, New York University, Columbia University and Boston University.