Download or read book The Humanities Crisis and the Future of Literary Studies written by P. Jay and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-17 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrating that the supposed drawbacks of the humanities are in fact their source of practical value, Jay explores current debates about the role of the humanities in higher education, puts them in historical context, and offers humanists and their supporters concrete ways to explain the practical value of a contemporary humanities education.
Download or read book Interdiscipline written by Petar Ramadanovic and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together two different discussions on the value of the humanities and a broader debate on interdisciplinary scholarship in order to propose a new way beyond current threats to the humanities. Petar Ramadanovic offers nothing short of a drastic rehaul of our approaches to literary scholarship, the humanities, and university systems. Beginning with an analysis of what is often referred to as the "crises" in the humanities, the author looks at the specifics of literary studies, but also issues around working conditions for academics. From precarity and pay conditions to peer review, the book has practical as well as theoretical implications that will resonate throughout the humanities. While most books defending the humanities emphasize the uniqueness of the subject or area, Ramadanovic does the opposite, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinarity and combined knowledge. This proposal is then fully explored through literary studies, and its potential throughout the humanities and beyond, into the sciences. Interdiscipline is not just a defense of literature and the humanities; it offers a clear and inspiring pathway forwards, drawing on all disciplines to show their cultural and social significance. The book is important reading for all scholars of literary studies, and also throughout the humanities.
Download or read book The Employment of English written by Michael Bérubé and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although few taxpayers and legislators care whether the nation's English professors are doing justice to identifying the beautiful and the sublime, conversely the image of English departments plays a major role in determining public attitudes toward colleges and college faculty. Investigating the ramifications of current debates, this book provides the clearest and most comprehensive account of this controversy to date.
Download or read book The Employment of English written by Michael Bérubé and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although few taxpayers and legislators care whether the nation's English professors are doing justice to identifying the beautiful and the sublime, conversely the image of English departments plays a major role in determining public attitudes toward colleges and college faculty. Investigating the ramifications of current debates, this book provides the clearest and most comprehensive account of this controversy to date.
Download or read book Literature Science and a New Humanities written by J. Gottschall and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-09-29 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary studies are at a tipping point. ." There is broad agreement that the discipline is in "crisis" - that it is aimless, that its intellectual energy is spent, that all of the trends are bad, and that fundamental change will be required to set things right. But there is little agreement on what those changes should be, and no one can predict which way things will ultimately tip. Literature, Science, and a New Humanities represents a bold new response to the crisis in academic literary studies. This book presents a total challenge to dominant paradigms of literary analysis and offers a sweeping critique of those paradigms, and sketches outlines of a new paradigm inspired by scientific theories, methods, and attitudes.
Download or read book Permanent Crisis written by Paul Reitter and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-04-05 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. ,
Download or read book Global Matters written by Paul Jay and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-15 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the pace of cultural globalization accelerates, the discipline of literary studies is undergoing dramatic transformation. Scholars and critics focus increasingly on theorizing difference and complicating the geographical framework defining their approaches. At the same time, Anglophone literature is being created by a remarkably transnational, multicultural group of writers exploring many of the same concerns, including the intersecting effects of colonialism, decolonization, migration, and globalization. Paul Jay surveys these developments, highlighting key debates within literary and cultural studies about the impact of globalization over the past two decades. Global Matters provides a concise, informative overview of theoretical, critical, and curricular issues driving the transnational turn in literary studies and how these issues have come to dominate contemporary global fiction as well. Through close, imaginative readings Jay analyzes the intersecting histories of colonialism, decolonization, and globalization engaged by an array of texts from Africa, Europe, South Asia, and the Americas, including Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Vikram Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Mohsin Hamid's Moth Smoke, and Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness. A timely intervention in the most exciting debates within literary studies, Global Matters is a comprehensive guide to the transnational nature of Anglophone literature today and its relationship to the globalization of Western culture.
Download or read book Does Literary Studies Have a Future written by Eugene Goodheart and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As we approach the end of a millennium, the battle for the fate of literary scholarship has taken on near apocalyptic overtones, with more than a few predictions of the imminent end of literary studies as we know it. Taking aim at culture warriors on the left and the right, Goodheart provides a succinct and timely assessment of the current state and future of literary studies in the US. In Goodheart's view, the opposition between tradition (the cause of the right) and innovation (the cause of the left) is essentially false : tradition is an interactive history between the given and the innovative, not an inert set of values or a stable canon of approved texts. (Midwest).
Download or read book Rethinking the Humanities written by Ricardo Gil Soeiro and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In what we consider to be a timely collection of essays, the volume Rethinking the Humanities: Paths and Challenges tries to reflect upon the present condition of the humanities and their manifold challenges, acutely dramatized in an era of increasing contingency and globalization. By drawing upon a wide variety of perspectives and areas of research (from literary studies to philosophy, from cultural criticism to the history of ideas), we hope to surpass the now dominant rhetoric of crisis (as it features, for example, in George Steiner’s essay ‘Humanities – At Twilight?’), not only by devising new horizons for a humanistic-literary culture (Cândido de Oliveira Martins) and envisioning literary studies in a Post-literary age (David Damrosch), but also by advocating an ethical turn for the humanities (Peter Levine and José Pedro Serra) – seen as an education toward autonomy (Richard Wolin), as well as by reconsidering the very notion of crisis within the humanities (Marjorie Perloff and António Sousa Ribeiro). By doing so, and whilst it does not claim to offer definitive answers, the volume nevertheless strives to open up new fields of debate and innovative perspectives.” – The editors
Download or read book Literary Culture in a World Transformed written by William Paulson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary studies are in danger of being left behind in the twenty-first century. Print culture risks becoming a thing of the past in the multimedia age; meanwhile, human life and society are undergoing rapid changes as a result of new technologies, the intensification of global capitalism, and the effects of human actions on the environment.In this transformed world, William Paulson argues for a radical renewal of literary studies. Modern literary culture has defined itself, in opposition to science, politics, and commerce, as a protected sphere of democratic and free inquiry, but today that autonomy may lead to isolation from the real dynamics of cultural and global change. Paulson clearly and convincingly demonstrates the need for literary studies to embrace both the unfashionable literary past and the technologically saturated future, and to train not a countersociety of cultural critics but citizens of the world who can communicate the irreducible strangeness and multiplicity of literature to a society on hyperdrive. His series of concrete proposals, ranging from a closer connection between literature and everyday language to the restructuring of undergraduate and graduate education, will immeasurably enrich current discussions of the humanities' role in the life of the world.
Download or read book The Future Without a Past written by John Paul Russo and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Argues that technological imperatives like rationalization, universalism, monism, and autonomy have transformed the humanities and altered the relation between humans and nature. Examines technology and its impact on education, historical memory, and technological and literary values in criticism and theory, concluding with an analysis of the fiction of Don DeLillo"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Futures of Literary Studies written by Tim Lanzendörfer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-30 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together essays that ask how one may chart more productive engagements with the methodological foundations of literary studies, a discipline that is finding itself in a moment of severe crisis. The temptation to reduce methodological debates to method wars constitutes one of the main obstacles for what ought to be the common goal of our discipline: to articulate the possible and indeed necessary futures of literary studies. How do we think about the future of literary studies in the funerary climate that has engendered the belief that we need to fight our internal wars for survival? How might (must?) our understanding of what literary criticism is and does change? How do we formulate possible futures for literary studies while grappling with the significant problems that our present poses? The chapters in this volume stage hopeful interventions that seek to contribute to the effort to explore the futures of literary studies by way of and conceived as a collective endeavor. Together, the authors advance a call for better, more useful, more active, more networked, and, yes, even for abandoned versions of the always multiple and joyously contradictory discipline that is called literary studies. This book will be beneficial to students and scholars of English literature, literary theory and literary studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice and are accompanied by a new Preface.
Download or read book The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies written by Martin Paul Eve and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-17 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive overview into digital literary studies that equips readers to navigate the difficult contentions in this space. The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of 'the literary' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading. You may have heard of the digital humanities—and what you may have heard may not have been good. Yet like an oncoming storm, the relentless growth of the use of digital methods for the study of literature seems inevitable. This book gives an insight into the ways in which digital approaches can be used to study literature and the ways in which humanistic study can be used to explore digital literature. Examining its subject across the axes of authorship, space, and visualization, maps and place, distance and history, and ethical approaches to the digital humanities, this book introduces newcomers to the topic while also offering plenty for seasoned digital humanities pros. Combining original research with third-party case studies and examples, this book will appeal both to students and researchers across all levels who wish to learn about digital literary studies.
Download or read book The Question of Literature written by Elizabeth Beaumont Bissell and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As literary theory has grown more influential, interdisciplinary and sophisticated, it has come to concern itself with a much greater range of issues and objects than those traditionally considered literary. It now addresses philosophy, history, psychology, politics and the media. Addressing a central and fundamental, but relatively neglected, issue in literary theory, this title seeks to recontextualise how theory has changed our understanding of literature and its questions by relating literature to the institution of the university, to ethical judgements and values, new media and computer technology and the nature of representative democracy.
Download or read book The Transformative Humanities written by Mikhail Epstein and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-10-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his famous classification of the sciences, Francis Bacon not only catalogued those branches of knowledge that already existed in his time, but also anticipated the new disciplines he believed would emerge in the future: the "desirable sciences." Mikhail Epstein echoes, in part, Bacon's vision and outlines the "desirable" disciplines and methodologies that may emerge in the humanities in response to the new realities of the twenty-first century. Are the humanities a purely scholarly field, or should they have some active, constructive supplement? We know that technology serves as the practical extension of the natural sciences, and politics as the extension of the social sciences. Both technology and politics are designed to transform what their respective disciplines study objectively. The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto addresses the question: Is there any activity in the humanities that would correspond to the transformative status of technology and politics? It argues that we need a practical branch of the humanities which functions similarly to technology and politics, but is specific to the cultural domain.
Download or read book The Humanities and the Dream of America written by Geoffrey Galt Harpham and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A New Deal for the Humanities written by Gordon Hutner and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-11 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many in higher education fear that the humanities are facing a crisis. But even if the rhetoric about “crisis” is overblown, humanities departments do face increasing pressure from administrators, politicians, parents, and students. In A New Deal for the Humanities, Gordon Hutner and Feisal G. Mohamed bring together twelve prominent scholars who address the history, the present state, and the future direction of the humanities. These scholars keep the focus on public higher education, for it is in our state schools that the liberal arts are taught to the greatest numbers and where their neglect would be most damaging for the nation. The contributors offer spirited and thought-provoking debates on a diverse range of topics. For instance, they deplore the push by administrations to narrow learning into quantifiable outcomes as well as the demands of state governments for more practical, usable training. Indeed, for those who suggest that a college education should be “practical”—that it should lean toward the sciences and engineering, where the high-paying jobs are—this book points out that while a few nations produce as many technicians as the United States does, America is still renowned worldwide for its innovation and creativity, skills taught most effectively in the humanities. Most importantly, the essays in this collection examine ways to make the humanities even more effective, such as offering a broader array of options than the traditional major/minor scheme, options that combine a student’s professional and intellectual interests, like the new medical humanities programs. A democracy can only be as energetic as the minds of its citizens, and the questions fundamental to the humanities are also fundamental to a thoughtful life. A New Deal for the Humanities takes an intrepid step in making the humanities—and our citizens—even stronger in the future.
