Why the Humanities Matter Today

Why the Humanities Matter Today

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  • Author: Lee Trepanier
  • Publisher: Lexington Books
  • ISBN: 1498538614
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 166

Why the Humanities Matter Today explains the importance of philosophy, foreign language, literature, history, political theory, and liberal education in American higher education. The contributors in this book provide new arguments about why their disciplines matter and what value they bring to students, the university, and the public./span


The Value of the Humanities

The Value of the Humanities

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  • Author: Helen Small
  • Publisher: OUP Oxford
  • ISBN: 0191506796
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 224

The Value of the Humanities provides a critical account of the principal arguments used to defend the value of the Humanities. The claims considered are: that the Humanities study the meaning-making practices of culture, and bring to their work a distinctive understanding of what constitutes knowledge and understanding; that, though useful to society in many ways, they remain laudably at odds with, or at a remove from, instrumental use value; that they contribute to human happiness; that they are a force for democracy; and that they are a good in themselves, to be valued 'for their own sake'. Engaging closely with contemporary literary and philosophical work in the field from the UK and US, Helen Small distinguishes between arguments that retain strong Victorian roots (Mill on happiness; Arnold on use value) and those that have developed or been substantially altered since. Unlike many works in this field, The Value of the Humanities is not a polemic or a manifesto. Its purpose is to explore the grounds for each argument, and to test its validity for the present day. Tough-minded, alert to changing historical conditions for argument and changing styles of rhetoric, it promises to sharpen the terms of the public debate.


The Humanities and the Dream of America

The Humanities and the Dream of America

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  • Author: Geoffrey Galt Harpham
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN: 0226317013
  • Category : Literary Criticism
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 256

In this bracing and original book, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that today’s humanities are an invention of the American academy in the years following World War II, when they were first conceived as an expression of American culture and an instrument of American national interests. The humanities portray a “dream of America” in two senses: they represent an aspiration of Americans since the first days of the Republic for a state so secure and prosperous that people could enjoy and appreciate culture for its own sake; and they embody in academic terms an idealized conception of the American national character. Although they are struggling to retain their status in America, the concept of the humanities has spread to other parts of the world and remains one of America's most distinctive and valuable contributions to higher education. The Humanities and the Dream of America explores a number of linked problems that have emerged in recent years: the role, at once inspiring and disturbing, played by philology in the formation of the humanities; the reasons for the humanities’ perpetual state of “crisis”; the shaping role of philanthropy in the humanities; and the new possibilities for literary study offered by the subject of pleasure. Framed by essays that draw on Harpham’s pedagogical experiences abroad and as a lecturer at the U.S. Air Force Academy, as well as his vantage as director of the National Humanities Center, this book provides an essential perspective on the history, ideology, and future of this important topic.


You Can Do Anything

You Can Do Anything

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  • Author: George Anders
  • Publisher: Little, Brown
  • ISBN: 0316548855
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 352

In a tech-dominated world, the most needed degrees are the most surprising: the liberal arts Did you take the right classes in college? Will your major help you get the right job offers? For more than a decade, the national spotlight has focused on science and engineering as the only reliable choice for finding a successful post-grad career. Our destinies have been reduced to a caricature: learn to write computer code or end up behind a counter, pouring coffee. Quietly, though, a different path to success has been taking shape. In YOU CAN DO ANYTHING, George Anders explains the remarkable power of a liberal arts education - and the ways it can open the door to thousands of cutting-edge jobs every week. The key insight: curiosity, creativity, and empathy aren't unruly traits that must be reined in. You can be yourself, as an English major, and thrive in sales. You can segue from anthropology into the booming new field of user research; from classics into management consulting, and from philosophy into high-stakes investing. At any stage of your career, you can bring a humanist's grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future. And if you know how to attack the job market, your opportunities will be vast. In this book, you will learn why resume-writing is fading in importance and why "telling your story" is taking its place. You will learn how to create jobs that don't exist yet, and to translate your campus achievements into a new style of expression that will make employers' eyes light up. You will discover why people who start in eccentric first jobs - and then make their own luck - so often race ahead of peers whose post-college hunt focuses only on security and starting pay. You will be ready for anything.


Not for Profit

Not for Profit

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  • Author: Martha C. Nussbaum
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • ISBN: 069117332X
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 200

In this short and powerful book, celebrated philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes a passionate case for the importance of the liberal arts at all levels of education. Historically, the humanities have been central to education because they have been seen as essential for creating competent democratic citizens. But recently, Nussbaum argues, thinking about the aims of education has gone disturbingly awry in the United States and abroad. We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world. In response to this dire situation, Nussbaum argues that we must resist efforts to reduce education to a tool of the gross national product. Rather, we must work to reconnect education to the humanities in order to give students the capacity to be true democratic citizens of their countries and the world. In a new preface, Nussbaum explores the current state of humanistic education globally and shows why the crisis of the humanities has far from abated. Translated into over twenty languages, Not for Profit draws on the stories of troubling—and hopeful—global educational developments. Nussbaum offers a manifesto that should be a rallying cry for anyone who cares about the deepest purposes of education.


Why the Humanities Matter

Why the Humanities Matter

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  • Author: Frederick Luis Aldama
  • Publisher: University of Texas Press
  • ISBN: 0292784341
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 393

This wide-ranging study of the influence of postmodernism on contemporary culture offers a trenchant and uplifting defense of the humanities. Is there life after postmodernism? Many claim that it sounded the death knell for history, art, ideology, science, possibly all of Western philosophy, and even the concept of reality itself. Responding to essential questions regarding whether the humanities can remain politically and academically relevant amid this twenty-first-century uncertainty, Why the Humanities Matter offers a guided tour of the modern condition, calling upon thinkers in a variety of disciplines to affirm essential concepts such as truth, goodness, and beauty. Through a lens of “new humanism,” Frederick Aldama provides a liberating examination of the current cultural repercussions of assertions by such revolutionary theorists as Said, Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida, as well as Latin Americanists such as Sommer and Mignolo. Emphasizing pedagogy and popular culture with equal verve, Aldama presents an enlightening way to explore what “culture” actually does—who generates it and how it shapes our identities—and the role of academia in sustaining it.


How to Do Things with Fictions

How to Do Things with Fictions

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  • Author: Joshua Landy
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • ISBN: 019518856X
  • Category : Literary Criticism
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 265

How to Do Things with Fictions considers how fictional works, ranging from Chaucer to Beckett, subject readers to a series of exercises meant to fortify their mental capacities.


Permanent Crisis

Permanent Crisis

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  • Author: Paul Reitter
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN: 022673823X
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 335

Leads scholars and anyone who cares about the humanities into more effectively analyzing the fate of the humanities and digging into the very idea of the humanities as a way to find meaning and coherence in the world. The humanities, considered by many as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis, at the mercy of modernizing and technological forces that are driving universities towards academic pursuits that pull in grant money and direct students to lucrative careers. But as Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon show, this crisis isn’t new—in fact, it’s as old as the humanities themselves. Today’s humanities scholars experience and react to basic pressures in ways that are strikingly similar to their nineteenth-century German counterparts. The humanities came into their own as scholars framed their work as a unique resource for resolving crises of meaning and value that threatened other cultural or social goods. The self-understanding of the modern humanities didn’t merely take shape in response to a perceived crisis; it also made crisis a core part of its project. Through this critical, historical perspective, Permanent Crisis can take scholars and anyone who cares about the humanities beyond the usual scolding, exhorting, and hand-wringing into clearer, more effective thinking about the fate of the humanities. Building on ideas from Max Weber and Friedrich Nietzsche to Helen Small and Danielle Allen, Reitter and Wellmon dig into the very idea of the humanities as a way to find meaning and coherence in the world. ,


Humanities World Report 2015

Humanities World Report 2015

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  • Author: P. Holm
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISBN: 113750028X
  • Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 215

This book is open access under a CC BY license. The first of its kind, this Open Access 'Report' is a first step in assessing the state of the humanities worldwide. Based on an extensive literature review and enlightening interviews the book discusses the value of the humanities, the nature of humanities research and the relation between humanities and politics, amongst other issues.


The Humanities Still Matter

The Humanities Still Matter

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  • Author: Rubén Jarazo-Álvarez
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN: 9781789972801
  • Category : Literary Criticism
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

«Fully convinced that the humanities still matter, I very warmly and whole-heartedly.