Restructure the Humanities Ph.D.

By Christopher P. Long. The Modern Language Association’s report on doctoral study in language and literature, released last month, does well to avoid framing the question of the humanities Ph.D. in terms of a "crisis in the humanities." Instead, it focuses our attention where it belongs—on the underlying institutional structures that inhibit the evolution of the humanities Ph.D.
The report acknowledges that there is a "crisis in academic publishing in literary studies" and that "the crisis that has beset university presses in the last decade makes the scholarly monograph an endangered species." More...