The humanities are dying, but few scholars are willing to consider the possibility that the most fatal wounds were self-inflicted.
Tenure-track jobs are disappearing, budgets are being cut, and enrollment is declining. Even the once reliable trust fund class seems to be ignoring the history of art in favor of hard science. As a recent PhD graduate, I can't deny that the humanities are great. If you say so, extinction event.
At its deepest level, reading literature provides a valuable experience not easily available in everyday life: a painless education in the unwritten rules of social interaction.
consensus regarding why This is difficult to achieve. Many of us point to the same nemesis of high culture. Conservative, austerity-minded administrators and governors are bowing to economic and social pressures to promote practical, graduate-pleasing majors like engineering, computer science, and business.
Scholars seeking to view the crisis from a broader perspective may point to a “slowing down” of culture. In a world where “Harry Potter'' would pass as a fine movie for adults, “The Iliad'' would not be shown.
Technology didn't help either. Smartphones and social media are far more formidable adversaries to undivided attention and sustained concentration than mere television ever was.
While there is certainly some truth to both accounts, they present a suspiciously macabre and fawning portrait of a professional liberal arts purveyor. Robin Williams in a sack suit standing on a desk against the Philistines in “Dead Poets Society.”
But Williams' John Keating advised him to approach the strangeness of Walt Whitman, Robert Herrick, and Lord Byron with humility and curiosity. His 21st century counterpart is likely to prefer the role of an inquisitor who decries centuries-old works as not living up to today's progressive attitudes.
Russian literary scholar Gary Saul Mawson observed More than a decade ago, such shallow condescension was perfectly effective in devaluing the discipline in itself.
“Literature cannot teach anything because it assumes that truth is already given,” Molson wrote.Once you have identified your blind spots in a particular task for Gender, race, colonialist supremacy, what else do we need to talk about?
The ability to recite a Shakespearean sonnet or two may not help you on the job market, but at least it's likely to break the ice with your potential spouse or earn you a free drink. By comparison, the facile moral lessons that modern scholarship extracts from the Bard are completely worthless.
that's not to say they are harmless. Engaging in imitation of critical thinking can dull your taste for the real thing. It is better to ignore the past completely than to use it to strengthen the illusions peculiar to our time.
Most importantly, the current custodians of literary studies have deliberately obscured the qualities most likely to arouse and fascinate undergraduates, the very qualities that once attracted them to the field. It is something that is hidden.
At its deepest level, reading literature provides valuable experiences not easily available in everyday life. It's about being painlessly educated about the unwritten rules of social interaction. The freedom and joy of seeing the world from a perspective fundamentally different from your own. A glimpse into what it means to live through the harshest challenges or reach the deepest self-understanding.
As long as these works survive, so too will the wisdom they have to offer. But wisdom requires careful management. The mass abdication of our nation's educational elite is disheartening, but there is no point in indulging in excessive condemnation or mourning. If the institutions entrusted with nurturing the hearts and minds of our youth are no longer up to the task, then it is time for us to focus our energies on creating institutions that can. .
Peter Pike is a professor of English at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.
