Did you read the recent piece online at The Atlantic? Building on an earlier online piece from The Chronicle of Higher Education (and using its graphs, like me) it makes the point that, when judged by the percentage of all degrees earned, the anomaly in the Humanities isn’t now but a few decades ago, when the influx of baby boomer freshmen found college majors. The drop that followed their departure is therefore better understood as a normalization. […]
Category: Relevance of Humanities
Posts in this category discuss the wider relevance of those tools, methods, and disciplines often grouped together and called the Humanities.
Just Follow the Subsidy
What is the relevance of the Humanities…? This paragraph ends (quoting Jane Wellman) with one interesting answer to that often-asked question. From Jeffrey Selingo’s College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What it Means for Students (2013, p. 29). […]
Habits of Mind
What do you think the Humanities are all about? […]
The Heart of the Matter
What do you think the Humanities are? As we strive to create a more civil public discourse, a more adaptable and creative workforce, and a more secure nation, the humanities and social sciences are the heart of the matter, the keeper of the republic—a source of national memory and civic vigor, cultural understanding and communication, individual fulfillment and the ideals we hold in common. Read the full American Academy of Arts & Sciences report, written by its Commission on the […]
“They’re Fun People”
As my colleague Steven Ramey said, this is perhaps the best statement on the relevance of the Humanities that we’ve so far seen. That is comes from one of our own graduating majors inspires just a little pride. […]
The Challenge of the Humanities
Over the past year, the department’s series of reflections about the relevance of the Humanities and Social Sciences left me with the impression that articulating that relevance is quite difficult. We can discuss specific research topics that we see as being relevant, and we can discuss the translation of particular skills that our students gain for different job markets, but those more immediate payoffs become hard to generalize across the different approaches and assumptions within these varied fields. […]
Semper Ubi Sub Ubi
One of the curious items from today’s announcement from the Vatican that Pope Benedict XVI will be stepping down at the end of February was that he made his announcement, at a meeting of Cardinals, in Latin. So few reporters there understood Latin that it gave quite a competitive advantage to Giovanna Chirri, who works for ANSA (Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata), Italy’s main news wire service. As noted on the UK’s The Guardian real-time news blog: […]
So Madison Avenue Made a Farmer…
It’s not news to anyone to hear about the decline of the family-owned farm in the U.S. For example, consider this chart, from a 2007 article (click the graphic to go to the article), which tracks the dramatic increase in farm size, over the past 50 years, coupled with the equally dramatic decline in the total number of farms: […]
Critical Thinking Begins at Home
A letter came out recently from the President-elect of the main U.S. professional society for scholars who study religion concerning the conference theme for the 2014 meeting in San Diego: “Climate Change and the Coming Global Crisis: Religions and Responses” (read the full letter here [PDF]). Taking the letter as one’s object of study–since we, as scholars, are just as human, and thus our artifacts are just as interesting, as those we usually study, no?–provides an interesting moment in just […]
For the Sake of Public Discourse
Politicians continue to attack the Humanities and Social Sciences, most recently the governor of North Carolina reportedly asserted, “I don’t want to subsidize that [gender studies] if that’s not going to get someone a job.” While other posts on this blog (for example “You Just Watch Me” and “I Wonder What Caitlin Makes”) have challenged the assumption that Humanities and Social Science graduates have problems with employment, particular aspects of current public discourse clearly suggest that the skills that majors in the Humanities […]