A Rallying Cry for the Humanities

By Kelly J. Baker - Chronicle Vitae. Everywhere I look, I’m hearing Chicken Little stories about the decline and fall of the humanities: There’s a decline in majors! (On second thought, maybe not.) A decline in funding! A decline in women’s enrollment! Our fate as humanists is a constant topic of debate and consternation. Mark Sample, a visiting associate professor of digital studies at Davidson College, has even created a Twitter bot, @SaveHumanities, which offers machine-generated insights—“we need to quit being so damn pretty,” “we need to make our own cryptocurrency,” “we need a more awesome story”—on how to save our supposedly dying discipline. See more...