Fish, Stanley. "The Triumph of the Humanities." Opinionator Blog. NEW YORK TIMES June 13, 2011.

If interpretive methods and perspectives are necessary to the practice of geography, they are no less necessary to other projects supposedly separate from the project of the humanities. And that is why, in addition to GeoHumanities, we now have Biohumanities (“the humanities not only comment on the significance or implications of biological knowledge, but add to our understanding of biology itself” — Karola Stotz and Paul E. Griffiths), Disability Studies (of which the X-Men films might be both a representation and an instance), Metahistory (the study of the irreducibly narrative basis of historical “fact”), Law and Literature (the laying bare of the rhetorical and literary strategies giving form to every assertion in the law), Cultural Anthropology (an inquiry into the very possibility of anthropological observation that begins by acknowledging the inescapability of perspective and the ubiquity of interpretation), Cultural Sociology (“the commitment to hermeneutically reconstructing social texts in a rich and persuasive way” — Jeffrey C. Alexander and Philip Smith), and other hybrids already emergent and soon to emerge.

What this all suggests is that while we have been anguishing over the fate of the humanities, the humanities have been busily moving into, and even colonizing, the fields that were supposedly displacing them. In the ‘70s and the ‘80s the humanities exported theory to the social sciences and (with less influence) to the sciences; many disciplines saw a pitched battle between the new watchwords — perspective, contingency, dispersion, multi-vocality, intertextuality — and the traditional techniques of dispassionate observation, the collection of evidence, the drawing of warranted conclusions and the establishing of solid fact. Now the dust has settled and the invaded disciplines have incorporated much of what they resisted. Propositions that once seemed outlandish — all knowledge is mediated, even our certainties are socially constructed — are now routinely asserted in precincts where they were once feared as the harbingers of chaos and corrosive relativism.

One could say then that the humanities are the victors in the theory wars; nearly everyone now dances to their tune. But this conceptual triumph has not brought with it a proportionate share of resources or institutional support. Perhaps administrators still think of the humanities as the province of precious insights that offer little to those who are charged with the task of making sense of the world. Volumes like “GeoHumanities” tell a different story, and it is one that cannot be rehearsed too often.

Visit: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/the-triumph-of-the-humanities/.

Humanities Resource Center Online: Humanities Enjoy Strong Student Demand but Declining Conditions for Faculty.

The humanities continue to play a core role in higher education and student interest is strong, but to meet the demand, four-year colleges and universities are increasingly relying on a part-time, untenured workforce. Those are among the findings from the Humanities Departmental Survey, conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a consortium of disciplinary associations. The survey includes data collected from English, foreign language, history, history of science, art history, linguistics, and religion departments at approximately 1,400 colleges and universities. It is the first comprehensive survey to provide general cross-disciplinary data on humanities departments. . . . The full results are available on the Academy’s Humanities Resource Center Online at http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/.

Cfp: "Rethinking the Human Sciences," Humanities Research Group, University of Windsor & Humanities Centre, Wayne State University, March 11-13, 2010.

In The City of God, Augustine cites Varro's testimony that at least 288 philosophical sects participated in the expansion of Greek learning in the first century BCE. Varro might be said to describe, with searing prescience, the current intellectual promiscuity of the human sciences: new historicisms compete with old, kulturegeschichte jockeys with cultural studies, postmodernism courts the promises and perils of the modern, and just about every area of inquiry has taken one linguistic turn or another. In this vertiginous period, with national and international funding agencies mooring humanities support to 'knowledge transfer' and 'competitive advantage,' it seems timely to examine the place, status, and future of the human sciences in Canada and beyond. The term 'human sciences' (les science humaines) denotes an ensemble of areas of inquire broadly concerned with 'all things human,' with human beings in culture, with the subjective experience of cultural forms, change, and continuity. As Geoffrey Galt Harpham has argued, the 'crisis' in the humanities is no longer a temporary affliction but 'a way of life'; how do individual scholars in the human sciences as well as humanities centres respond to a state of perpetual crisis? How do we encounter, organise, and disseminate human intentionality across the disciplines? How might we improve our arguments for the centrality of the human sciences to the mission and future of contemporary universities? Proposals might explore, but are no way limited to, the following issues: - the state / status and future of the human sciences - institutional and intellectual contexts for humanistic inquiry - tact, taste, and intention as constituents of humanist inquiry - imprecision and redescription as constituents of the humanities - ritualistic crises - the promises and perils of interdisciplinarity - postmodernism and the human sciences - linguistic and other turns - uncertain knowledges and evidential paradigms Geoffrey Galt Harpham, author of, among many essays and monographs, Shadows of Ethics: Criticism and the Just Society (Duke, 1999), Language Alone: the Critical Fetish of Modernity (Routledge, 2002), and The Character of Criticism (Routledge, 2006), has agreed to a keynote address on Thursday, 11 March 2010. His insights into the contemporary configuration and status of the human sciences will anchor our discussions for the next two days. Submit a single-spaced, 500 word [1 page] abstract of your twenty-minute paper and a brief curriculum vitae [in wordperfect, word, or rtf] to Stephen Pender, spender@uwindsor.ca by 1 October 2009.

"The Two Cultures in the 21st Century," New York Academy of Sciences, May 9, 2009.

In 1959 the prominent British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow gave a pivotal lecture before a crowd of his colleagues in Cambridge. The lecture focused on what he saw as a serious divide between the sciences and the humanities. As a researcher and creative writer he had a unique perspective on the problem and its impact on society at large. Now, 50 years after that famous lecture, Science & the City is gathering together a wide array of experts to discuss whether or not the divide still exists and how it affects contemporary society. This full-day symposium will feature keynotes by E.O. Wilson, Dean Kamen, and former Congressman John Edward Porter, as well as panel discussions on politics, education, and the history surrounding the two cultures debate. Visit the conference page here: http://www.nyas.org/snc/twocultures/index.asp.

Cohen, Patricia. "In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth." NEW YORK TIMES February 24, 2009.

One idea that elite universities like Yale, sprawling public systems like Wisconsin and smaller private colleges like Lewis and Clark have shared for generations is that a traditional liberal arts education is, by definition, not intended to prepare students for a specific vocation. Rather, the critical thinking, civic and historical knowledge and ethical reasoning that the humanities develop have a different purpose: They are prerequisites for personal growth and participation in a free democracy, regardless of career choice. But in this new era of lengthening unemployment lines and shrinking university endowments, questions about the importance of the humanities in a complex and technologically demanding world have taken on new urgency. Previous economic downturns have often led to decreased enrollment in the disciplines loosely grouped under the term “humanities” — which generally include languages, literature, the arts, history, cultural studies, philosophy and religion. Many in the field worry that in this current crisis those areas will be hit hardest. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html?_r=2.

Hanson, Victor Davis. "The Humanities Move Off Campus." CITY JOURNAL 18.4 (2008).

Until recently, classical education served as the foundation of the wider liberal arts curriculum, which in turn defined the mission of the traditional university. Classical learning dedicated itself to turning out literate citizens who could read and write well, express themselves, and make sense of the confusion of the present by drawing on the wisdom of the past. Students grounded in the classics appreciated the history of their civilization and understood the rights and responsibilities of their unique citizenship. Universities, then, acted as cultural custodians, helping students understand our present values in the context of a 2,500-year tradition that began with the ancient Greeks. But in recent decades, classical and traditional liberal arts education has begun to erode, and a variety of unexpected consequences have followed. The academic battle has now gone beyond the in-house “culture wars” of the 1980s. Though the argument over politically correct curricula, controversial faculty appointments, and the traditional mission of the university is ongoing, the university now finds itself being bypassed technologically, conceptually, and culturally, in ways both welcome and disturbing. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_4_classical_education.html.

Jaschik, Scott. "The State of the Humanities." INSIDE HIGHER ED January 7, 2009.

Between 1988 and 2004, the percentage of humanities faculty members feeling “very satisfied” with their jobs increased by 10 percentage points, to 45 percent. When adjusted for inflation, most humanities faculty members saw their salaries dip slightly in the early 1990s, and then saw increases for the next decade. The net increase from 1987 to 2003 was about 5 percent for assistant and associate professors and 3 percent for full professors. In 2003, college graduates who were 10 years out of their undergraduate institution were largely concentrated in two fields: education and business. These are among the statistics being released today in the Humanities Indicators Prototype, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The data come from a wide range of sources and cover graduate and undergraduate education, as well as elementary and secondary education, and indicators that relate broadly to American life. . . . Read the rest here: http://insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/07/humanities.

CFP: "The Making of the Humanities," University of Amsterdam, October 23-25, 2008.

Goal of the Conference: We aim at bringing together scholars and historians of the various humanities disciplines to draw the outlines for a comparative history of the humanities. We are especially keen on understanding the mutual interplay between the humanities and how they developed from the artes liberales, via the studia humanitatis, to (early) modern disciplines. Although there exist separate histories of single humanities disciplines, a comparative history would satisfy a long-felt need, and fill a conspicuous gap in intellectual history. An edited book with a prominent publisher is planned, with the provisional title Another History of Science: The Making of the Humanities. Topics for Abstracts: We invite submissions that explore the connections between different disciplines in the history of the humanities. While the focus is on the early modern period when the humanities started to emerge (roughly 1400-1800), we also welcome proposals for papers exploring interesting links with earlier or later periods. Topics include all aspects of the history of philology, linguistics, logic, rhetoric, music theory, ‘ars historica’ and ‘ars poetica’, with an emphasis on their interrelations as well as their impact on the natural sciences, philosophy and theology, and on the broader cultural and political context. Sample questions of interest include the following: What was the role of the humanities in the development of the natural sciences and the scientific revolution? How were different humanities disciplines integrated in different periods, e.g. in Lorenzo Valla’s discovery that the Donatio Constantini was a forgery? Did developments in historiography lead to a Copernican turn in the humanities? Can the origins of empiricism be traced back to philology? What were the major discoveries and inventions in the humanities that “changed the world”? How did the combined presentation of naturalia and artificialia in cabinets of curiosities influence the development of the humanities? Who are the key figures of the humanities in different periods -- e.g. Alberti, Valla, Ramus, Erasmus, Scaliger, Reuchlin, Kircher, Holder etc. For more information, visit the conference homepage at http://www.illc.uva.nl/MakingHumanities/abstracts.html.

Fuller, Steve. "Who Needs the Humanities?" PROJECT SYNDICATE (2008).

Nowadays, in country after country, policymakers have become obsessed with the need to strengthen science education. But what about the humanities – all those disciplines (literature, history, languages, and so forth) whose relevance to economic competitiveness is not so obvious? We need the humanities only if we are committed to the idea of humanity. If the humanities have become obsolete, then it may be that humanity is losing its salience. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/fuller6/English.

McClay, Wilfred. "The Burden of the Humanities." WILSON QUARTERLY (2008).

What does it mean to speak of the “burden” of the humanities? The phrase can be taken several ways. First, it can refer to the weight the humanities themselves have to bear, the things that they are supposed to accomplish on behalf of us, our nation, or our civilization. But it can also refer to the ­near ­opposite: the ways in which the humanities are a source of responsibility for us, and their recovery and cultivation and preservation our job, even our ­duty. Both of these senses of ­burden—­the humanities as preceptor, and the humanities as ­task—­need to be included in our sense of the problem. The humanities, rightly pursued and rightly ordered, can do things, and teach things, and preserve things, and illuminate things, which can be accomplished in no other way. It is the humanities that instruct us in the range and depth of human possibility, including our immense capacity for both goodness and depravity. It is the humanities that nourish and sustain our shared memories, and connect us with our civilization’s past and with those who have come before us. It is the humanities that teach us how to ask what the good life is for us humans, and guide us in the search for civic ideals and institutions that will make the good life ­possible. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=452772&forumaction=forums.threads.