Books are for (Re)Use
A Broader History Ph.D.
Pioneering the study of inhumanity
By . The story of a remarkable research centre devoted to understanding “the roots of extremism” has been reconstructed in a new radio documentary. The centre’s origins stem from a speech by the then Observer editor David Astor in April 1962, in which he argued that since most Nazi leaders and supporters were “not mad in a medical sense”, we had to confront something “deeply alarming and disturbing” about human nature - namely “the pathological possibilities of the normal mind”. More...
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...
We’re Not Teaching the Next Generation of Digital Humanists
By . I’m looking forward to a moment in the future. That moment is when the word “digital” is dropped from “digital humanities.” This semester I’m teaching an introductory digital humanities course to undergraduates at Hendrix College and one thing we’re doing is teleconferencing with DH scholars across the country.
The learning objective is to expose my students to the many different ways digital humanities scholarship is done, to let them see the paths people have taken, and for students to imagine their own way in digital humanities scholarship, if they decide to pursue it. When speaking with our guests, one trend I’ve noticed is that they don’t care about labels. “Digital humanist” and “digital humanities” seem to be terms more useful for those on the outside to describe this technological encroachment. Is a writer a different kind of writer if she uses paper and pencil versus word processing, or publishes her own work online with multimedia? The questions being asked by digital humanists are inline with questions humanists have asked before. The only difference is using digital tools to help them in their task. More...
Who Knew? Arts Education Fuels the Economy
By Sunil Iyengar and Ayanna Hudson. In public-policy battles over arts education, you might hear that it is closely linked to greater academic achievement, social and civic engagement, and even job success later in life. But what about the economic value of an arts education? Here even the field’s most eloquent champions have been at a loss for words, or rather numbers.
Until now. More...
Rethinking the Role of College Career Centers for Humanities Graduates
By Brian C. Mitchell. Numerous studies indicate that the skills produced by a quality liberal arts education correspond precisely to what employers seek beyond technical training. The ability to articulate, write, apply quantitative methods, use technology, and work in a collaborative setting will continue to shape the parameters of the skill set needed in the 21st century.
So, why do liberal arts graduates, especially humanities majors, suffer from inaccurate and inconsistent portrayals of their attractiveness to employers?
There are likely several reasons behind this inconsistency. More...
Personal Economy and Liberal Arts
By Lee Burdette Williams. I recently sat through another compelling defense of the liberal arts, although I hardly needed to be in the choir again. I sing loudly from the song sheet, being both the recipient of a liberal arts education and an employee of a college deeply committed to this work. I am surrounded every day by the very evidence that its defenders offer in support of the necessary existence of this uniquely American construct. Read more...
Censoring Art and History
By Scott Jaschik. Curators at the new art museum at Kennesaw State University had some last-minute work to do before its grand opening Saturday night. They had to quickly pack up an installation -- one the art museum had commissioned -- after university administrators ordered it killed for being insufficiently "celebratory" for the event. Read more...