What's Happened to the Humanities? (Princeton Legacy Library) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691011559 ISBN 13: 9780691011554

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1997

Synopsis

This volume of specially commissioned original essays presents the thoughts of some of the most distinguished commentators within the American academy on the fundamental changes that have taken place in the humanities in the latter part of the twentieth century. In the transformation of American higher education from the university to the "demoversity," the humanities have become a less and less important part of education, a matter established by a statistical appendix and elaborated on in several of the essays. The individual essays offer close observations into how the humanities have been affected by declining academic status, by demographic shifts, by reductions in financial support, and by changing communication technology. They also explore the effect of these forces on books, libraries, and the phenomenology of reading in the age of images. When basic conditions change, theory follows, and several essays trace the appearance and effect of new relativistic epistemologies in the humanities. Social institutions change as well in such circumstances, and the volume concludes with studies of the new social arrangements that have developed in the humanities in recent years: the attack on professionalism and the effort to transform the humanities into the social conscience of academia and even of the nation as a whole.

Cause and effect? Who can say? What the essays make clear, however, is that as the humanities have become less significant in American higher education, they have also been the scene of unusually energetic pedagogical, social, and intellectual changes.

The contributors to the volume are David Bromwich, John D'Arms, Denis Donoghue, Carla Hesse, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lynn Hunt, Frank Kermode, Louis Menand, Francis Oakley, Christopher Ricks, and Margery Sabin. Included is a substantial introduction by Alvin Kernan and an appendix of tables and figures showing baccalaureate and doctoral degrees over the years in various types of schools.

Originally published in 1997.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

About this title

Reviews

Kernan gathers original essays by Lynn Hunt, John D'Arms, Francis Oakley, Margery Sabin, Carla Hesse, Denis Donoghue, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Frank Kermode, Christopher Ricks, Louis Menand, and David Bromwich on subjects ranging from demographics and funding for the humanities to specific disciplines' methodologies and philosophies. The cast of authors are a bit more anti than pro postmodernism, so this volume could be balanced by others, such as Bill Reading's The University in Ruins. But Kernan's contributors supply useful perspectives about the recent history of U.S. universities and their potential future, of particular interest to readers fascinated by university trends and the sometimes noisy battles within academe over the institutions' objectives and the meaning and value of the humanities. Mary Carroll

The current state of the humanities in American colleges and universities is the topic of this book, which contains 11 scholarly essays originally written for presentation at the National Humanities Center and at Boston University. Each contributor is a recognized humanities scholar, and, though a few of the essays are obscure, most are lucid and well documented. All 11 contributors have two premises in common: that their field of specialization occupies a less important position in academe today than it did midway through the century and that academic authority has eroded in order to give "power to the many." Kernan's clear, persuasive introduction is accompanied by tables and charts that show the declining number of humanities degrees awarded at the baccalaureate and graduate levels in the United States over the past 30 years. For academic libraries.?Joyce W. Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0691011559
• ISBN 13: 9780691011554
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 268
• Editor: Kernan Alvin B.