With more than 200 courses offered a year, the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures is one of the largest departments in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Students can choose courses that range from introductory language classes to advanced graduate seminars in literature and theory.

The department—the birthplace of the Modern Language Association and home to Modern Language Notes, one of the leading academic journals in literary studies—continues an illustrious tradition at Johns Hopkins of scholarship on the languages, literatures, and cultures of the French-, German-, Italian-, Portuguese-, Spanish-, and Yiddish-speaking worlds.

Undergraduates who major or minor in one or more of the department's languages emerge with a profound understanding not only of the language, culture, and literature they have studied, but of the importance of cultural difference for how one sees the world.

Graduate students and undergraduates regularly study in major universities and institutes abroad. Every year, students and faculty from partner universities abroad study and teach in the department, creating a dynamic intellectual scene.

What can you do with your degree?

The major prepares students for graduate school should they choose to continue their study, while other students pursue a variety of careers, benefiting from their immersion in the language and literature of another culture. Our graduate students come from around the United States and the world to earn their doctorates with this faculty, and go on to teach at some of the finest institutions in the U.S. and abroad. During their time here, they take advanced seminars while developing their own research program, and are supported by a combination of fellowships and graduate teaching. An emphasis on literary analysis in the original language provides students with powerful cognitive tools of immeasurable value in any walk of life.

Related Programs and Centers

• Center for Advanced Media Studies
• Film and Media Studies Program
• The Max Kade Center for Modern German Thought
• Centre Louis Marin for Interdisciplinary French Studies

The Department of Economics at Johns Hopkins University is one of the leading departments of economics in the U.S., with outstanding strength in its research faculty, graduate program, and undergraduate program.

The department offers a focused approach that sets it apart from other economics programs around the world. Faculty and graduate students engage in the exploration of five economic disciplines: applied microeconomics, economic theory, macroeconomics, econometrics, and finance.

Economics students at Johns Hopkins receive the kind of unique, intensive, and mutually respectful education that routinely places the department among the highest ranked economics programs in the United States.

The opportunity to learn directly from innovative thinkers draws students to the department. Faculty at the forefront of their fields incorporate the results of recent research into courses in microeconomics, econometrics, monetary economics, investments, managerial economics, mathematical economics, uncertainty, forecasting, and game theory.

The university’s proximity to Washington, D.C., draws to campus experts from institutions such as the Federal Reserve Bank and think tanks such as The Brookings Institution. The location also provides exceptional opportunities for internships and independent study. The Center for Financial Economics offers a rich array of courses in finance that are designed for students who have the mathematical and statistical background to pursue the field at a rigorous level.

What can you do with your degree?

Department of Economics alumni are leaders in their fields. Graduates are frequently appointed to esteemed academic institutions, think tanks, government research positions, and investment banks around the world.

Undergraduate students in economics gain critical thinking skills, enabling them to understand and analyze important trends in the field and pursue their own research. Many graduates go on to law school, medical school, or graduate school in economics, while others enter the workforce, usually in the fields of banking or finance, and still others are employed in the public sector.

Related Programs and Centers

• Center for Financial Economics

The Department of the History of Science and Technology in collaboration with the Department of History of Medicine offers an undergraduate major and minor in the history of science, medicine, and technology. Courses combine an appreciation of the developments in science, medicine, and technology with an awareness of their cultural impact. Requirements include courses in natural science, engineering, or mathematics. The program is well suited to double majors in the sciences and to premedical students. Courses offered by scholars from the Smithsonian Institution are a regular feature of the program. An optional senior thesis allows students to get practical experience and explore topics in depth.

Faculty interests extend from the Renaissance to the present. In addition to research on the main disciplines within science and medicine, faculty interests include science and exploration, science and religion, history of environmentalism and public health, East Asian history of science and technology, and science in Latin America.

What can you do with your degree?

An education in the history of science, medicine, and technology prepares students for the growing number of careers—medicine, teaching, journalism, law, public policy, business—in which an understanding of the impact of science is important.

The program offers a liberal arts education that meets all the requirements for premedical students. Graduates of the department have been accepted to some of the top medical schools in the country. Some students pursue graduate work in the public health disciplines. Others go on to law school or to graduate school in the natural sciences. Some graduates have become science writers,  historians, teachers, or have gone into business or museum work.

Related Programs and Centers

• Department of History of Medicine (Johns Hopkins Medical School)
• Singleton Center for the Study of Pre-Modern Europe
• Program in Museums and Society

The Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins is one of the few in the country that focuses exclusively on socio-cultural anthropology, one of the four traditional subfields of the discipline.

The anthropology major combines the study of social and cultural theory with the empirical study of everyday life, social organization, cultural and political expression, and forms of imagination across the diversity of human cultures past and present, including those of the students themselves.

The department’s faculty has field research experience in the Americas, South Asia, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa. Students and faculty explore themes such as the everyday, the state, religion, media, and health, building on interdisciplinary dialogues across the humanities, social sciences, and health sciences, focusing particularly on the challenges of our own moment in history.

What can you do with your degree?

With a degree in anthropology, you can work with government agencies or NGOs. You can pursue careers in medicine, international relations, politics, education, or community building.