How not to reform the humanities

By Paul Forster. Broadening the role of humanities education is laudable. How we get there is another matter.
A recent white paper on the future of graduate training in the humanities in Canada (December 2013) recommends reorienting some PhD programs away from traditional thesis projects and towards research that is “applied,” interdisciplinary, team-based and more varied in format than work currently being done. The authors, who are members of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council’s knowledge synthesis project on the future of humanities graduate training, rely on questionable assumptions, overlook alternative solutions to problems and draw unsubstantiated conclusions. More...