Religion plays a major role in shaping and influencing various cultures and historical and political movements around the world. Understanding religious traditions and their impact on diverse modern issues is vital preparation for building a career in the global marketplace. At Queen’s, our approach to the study of religion is multicultural, diverse, and interdisciplinary.

Politics is about power – who has it and how it is exercised by nation-states, individuals, groups, classes, or political parties, and how different interests are reconciled in and between communities. Political Studies is also concerned with the institutions created to govern communities, as well as with political practices such as voting habits or protests, and how rules, behaviours, and cultures are created in societies. Since power in society is often dependent upon material resources, political scientists also study the distribution of wealth, both within and between nations.

The Department of History at Queen’s offers a challenging and innovative program in established and new fields of historical inquiry, spanning from the pre-modern past to the contemporary era and geographically circling the globe. Consider a degree in History for all it has to offer: well-developed skills in critical reading, writing, and research and, perhaps even more importantly, engagement with oneself and the world we all inhabit. We are a mid-sized university and department and are, therefore, able to create for our students a rich, supportive learning community.

Gender Studies opens doors for students to address growing concerns about inequity, equity and justice across national and global societies. Gender affects everyone, making Gender Studies a space where our theory and our practice attend to the differences and connections among diverse peoples worldwide. As an interdisciplinary field, Gender Studies helps students connect social science, humanities, arts, and natural science methods to produce innovative new knowledge.

When you study English at Queen’s, you’ll learn to read perceptively, analyze clearly, and above all, communicate effectively. Students take courses that involve a wide range of critical methodologies, historical periods, and literary genres. The department’s vibrant intellectual community is developed and sustained by the synergies between the knowledge and passion of our distinguished faculty and the ideas and inspirations of our outstanding students.

Studying Classics leads to a wider appreciation of human values and achievements, and a more objective understanding of ourselves and our times. Multi-disciplinary in approach, Classics involves the studies of history, literature, archaeology, religion, mythology, drama and philosophy, in addition to the ancient languages of Greek and Latin. Today our understanding of Greek and Roman culture is further enhanced by the latest digital techniques that increasingly pervade studies in archaeology, epigraphy, papyrology, and ancient science and medicine.

Art conservation is an exciting and challenging multidisciplinary field involving the examination, interpretation, analysis and conservation of cultural, historic and artistic objects. Professional conservators and conservation scientists must rely on their knowledge of both the humanities and the sciences to understand the creation and production of material culture in past and present contexts to ensure its preservation for the future.

Queen's offers Canada's only Master's degree program in Art Conservation.

The Queen’s Art History program is strongly committed to mentoring students in a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, methodologies, and issues, including the technical examination of art, gender studies, critical theory, cultural representation, curatorial studies, and the relationships among art, literature, and science. The program offers a wide range of courses that explore how visual and material cultures have shaped human societies across time and around the world.

Grappling with life’s big topics, Philosophy provides students with critical thinking skills that enable you to uncover hidden assumptions, identify core premises, and evaluate arguments. The Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University has faculty working in a wide variety of fields, including political philosophy, ethics, bioethics, feminism, contemporary metaphysics and epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, continental philosophy and the history of philosophy.