My school offers a BA in Humanities and Western Civilization, with several choices of emphasis. I’m thinking of changing my major to the above, with the literature emphasis. Sure, I can’t get a job doing what I want to do: sitting around and reading all day. I don’t really care though. The major sounds interesting, and damn the future.
:: is puzzled :: Then how did they categorize English? I don’t think it really counts as an Arts degree unless you specialize in creative writing, and it certainly isn’t a social or natural science, so what’s left?
Anyway, as you’ve probably gathered from the rest of the responses, the literal answer to your question is “lots of things,” but one important thing to keep in mind is that humanities degrees were not conceived of and designed as preparation for a particular career. The driving idea behind this degree is that education is supposed to prepare you to use your leisure time well and wisely. (Hence the term “liberal arts,” where “liberal” doesn’t mean “politically left-wing,” but “pertaining to a free man” – in other words, somebody who is not under the necessity of earning a living.)
What do I do for a living? Teach. What do I actually do with my degree? Have fun, mostly. Go to plays and movies, and be able to say something more interesting than “the special effects were cool.” Go to museums and have a clue what I’m looking at. Travel, and have a clue about the history and culture of the places I’m seeing. Read, and figure out what I’m going to read next. Hold my own in conversations with intelligent people. Try not to look like a fool when I’m posting on the SDMB. You get the idea.
I was going to say that…
Someone once told me that EDS used to hire liberal arts majors and train them to be programmers; don’t know if it’s true.
Also, I know several project managers who had majors in the humanities.
GT
Literature studies in college, now a programmer.
Personally I would say that Humanities don’t teach you to do anything except (ideally) to think creatively. Thinking creatively however, is probably one of the most useful things in any profession to allow eventual success (…well, unless you’re at a company that discourages creativity.) You just have to make sure you’re teaching yourself a real profession in the meantime. 
It’s debatable whether the social sciences count as “humanities” or whether they’re a separate category (as the link you provided points out). The more sciencey they are, the less likely they are to be considered humanities. In many colleges and universities, in order to get a degree, you have to not only fulfill the requirements of your major but also get a well-rounded education by taking a certain number of “humanities” classes (as well as a certain number of social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, et al). For what it’s worth, at the college where I teach, there are classes offered that are actually called “Humanities [course number]” which sort of tie together history, philosophy, art, etc., as well as a broader “Humanities Division” under which fall classes in philosophy, religion, literature, etc.
I got my “well-rounding” in the unconventional other direction. My major would be considered part of the Humanities but I took science and art electives.
I didn’t go to college to get a working certificate. I wasn’t even sure at that time that I ever wanted to be employed.
Programming isn’t like engineering; you don’t have to know tons of physics and math, and you don’t have to have a degree in CS, but that’s got to be helpful when you’re starting out. Either that, or you want to have a degree in something like business or finance, or whatever’s relevant to the company you want to work for, or have some other way in.
Ways in can be varied. what happened in my case was that I took a job related to my master’s degree (MLS), but started tinkering with the system and solved a couple of major problems. I got noticed for that, and they offered to transfer me into IT (which was called Data Processing in those days). As my career has progressed, I’ve gone to better paid jobs at better companies (meaning bigger, more established, and in better parts of town). But without having paid the $18K yearly salary junior programmer dues (this was back in 1986), I wouldn’t be working where I am today.
It does seem to make you a bit more mathematical. I was fairly terrible in math at school but have improved considerably since I’ve been doing this work.
I’ll add that at some places, Humanities is meant to describe the things that aren’t the social sciences (instead of including social sciences). Then people get to argue about what’s a humanities discipline instead of a social science discipline. It’s a squishy term to be sure. I think generally anyone who majors in the humanities is probably buying into the whole liberals arts gig, so they are going to, as Hello Again says, have a bit of a grounding in everything before they escape college.
To answer the OPs question about what they do, sometimes people forget that there are many jobs out there that aren’t neatly described as butcher, lawyer, baker, writer, accountant, candlestick maker, etc. A lot of jobs are “squishy,” too (I’m apparently liking that word today).
Humanities students study all those things that make a university different than a vocational school.
Ideally, even business and engineering majors get a good healthy dose of humanities education at university. In my experience though, many of them complain about having to learn anything but their major. I guess they thought university was just about joining a frat or sorority and learning how to make money. Sadly, in some universities thatis indeed the case.
I studied linguistics, but here’s one thing I could have done had I chosen to go into the “real” humanities: translation (which I’m now doing anyway).
A lot of good translators are good translators precisely because they have a solid grounding in the culture of their target, and preferably also their source, language. A thorough humanities education makes it a lot more likely for you to pick up on subtle references, meanings, allusions, background knowledge, etc. in the piece you’re translating, and it will make you a more effective translator. You can still (I like to think) be a very good translator without it, but it does give you that longueur d’avance.
Well, that joke fell flat.
It probably would have worked better if the object were “criminal lawyer”, about which it can be argued that there is no other kind…
…ahhh. That answers *that * questions which had been niggling at me, in a low-level, bacground sort of way, for many years. This makes sense when one considers the historical context in which many universities were founded, when segments of the population did not have to work as they lived off the revenue from their family estates and payments from the state. Basically the aristocracy, or the “gentle” folks.
Thanks. I’m a little less ignorant today.
Aaaaaaaaaah!
I get what you were trying to say.
Sorry for missing the joke.