What's Happened to the Humanities? - Rilegato

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0691011559 ISBN 13: 9780691011554

Casa editrice: Princeton Univ Pr, 1997

Riassunto

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.

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Recensione

"The authors shrewdly analyze the dangers posed by new wave, post-modern scholarship. Though the reader may not agree with all their assessments, their arguments are powerfully and judiciously marshaled and laid out in succinct, lucid prose. . . . a highly eclectic volume, but a volume that should be read. . . by the reader interested in the intellectual, social and pedagogical changes sustained by the humanities in the closing years of this century."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"The forces that have buffeted the humanities are not entirely external to them, as most of the contributions acknowledge. The state of the humanities is, after all, related to the state of humanists."--James M. Morris, Wilson Quarterly

"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."--Booklist

Contenuti

	Foreword
	Introduction: Change in the Humanities and Higher Education	3
1	Democratization and Decline? The Consequences of Demographic Change in the Humanities	17
2	Funding Trends in the Academic Humanities, 1970-1995: Reflections on the Stability of the System	32
3	Ignorant Armies and Nighttime Clashes: Changes in the Humanities Classroom, 1970-1995	63
4	Evolution and Revolution: Change in the Literary Humanities, 1968-1995	84
5	Humanities and the Library in the Digital Age	107
6	The Practice of Reading	122
7	"Beyond Method"	143
8	Changing Epochs	162
9	The Pursuit of Metaphor	179
10	The Demise of Disciplinary Authority	201
11	Scholarship as Social Action	220
Appendix	Tables and Figures on B.A.s and Ph.D.s in the Humanities, 1966-1993	245
	About the Contributors	259
	Index	261

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Princeton Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0691011559
• ISBN 13: 9780691011554
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 267
• Redattore: Kernan Alvin B.
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile