Composed of 23 departments and programs offering 36 undergraduate majors, 25 minors, 19 master's and nine doctoral degrees, the College of Humanities and Fine Arts is one of the largest and most diverse on the UMass Amherst campus. We have several excellent and nationally ranked departments including English, History, Philosophy, and Linguistics which is always in the top four departments nationwide. Similarly, our MFA program in creative writing consistently places in the top ten. Our faculty authors have won prizes that include the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the Guggenheim, NEH grants, and several MacArthur "Genius Awards".

And yet, despite our size and scholarly repute, the College is a place that values teaching, that provides small classes, individual attention, and that places a great emphasis throughout the curriculum on writing. We offer numerous opportunities to study abroad both during the course of the regular academic year and in the summer. Special advisors help students attain internships that are relevant to both their majors and their future plans.

Students in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts will enlarge their fundamental skills in reading, writing, and speaking (in a multitude of languages) and develop new skills in logic and aesthetic expression. The study of languages and literatures, history and philosophy, cultures and society exercises - and enriches - the minds of all who engage seriously in these pursuits. The arts too, serve as modes of knowledge and ways of apprehension. In production and performance, students test imaginative hypotheses, become technically proficient, and discover new connections and meanings for themselves. The College's curriculum is designed to encourage students to become more competent, thoughtful, reflective, and humane. Graduates of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts will be equipped to make their lives, as well as earn their livings.

Joel W. Martin became the new dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts on July 1, 2006. Joel replaced Lee R. Edwards, who retired after serving as dean since 1991.

At the time of the appointment Charlena Seymour, provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, said that was "an excellent choice...with the energy, the intellect and the experience to be a top-rate leader for the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.”

In Riverside California where he served as interim dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Joel was the Costo Professor of American Indian Affairs in the department of history and religious studies. He chaired the department from 2002, and from 1996-2000, was chairman of the department of religious studies and Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA.

Joel's own research is focused on how different peoples responded to contact and colonialism in America and looks at and analyzes how the memory or suppression of this history relates to power, defines communities, and shapes narratives, art, and politics. He is currently researching the lives of New Englanders and Cherokees involved in an early mission and directing an editorial project dealing with Native America.

He is the author of Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees’ Struggle for a New World, Boston: Beacon Press (1991), which received the outstanding book award on the subject of human rights in the United States from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights. Martin is also coeditor of, Screening the Sacred: Religion, Mythology and Ideology in Popular American Film, Westview Press (1995) and author of Native American Religion, Oxford University Press (1999), reprinted as The Land Looks After Us (2001).

Joel earned his bachelor’s degree from Birmingham-Southern College in 1979; a master’s degree in theological studies from Harvard University in 1982; and a doctorate in the history of religions and Southern history from Duke University in 1988.