Considering the Humanities

Under the leadership of Patricia Meyer Spacks (University of Virginia) and Steven Marcus (Columbia University), this project examines the challenges facing the humanities today by placing them in the context of history. According to Spacks, "So complex, so multiple is the history of the humanities that one might more properly speak of histories, the plural suggesting the necessary intertwining of narrative threads."

A forthcoming volume, edited by Spacks, will explore the evolution of the humanities disciplines. Within and outside our universities, confusion continues to prevail over what has happened to the humanities. It seems relatively clear that history, literature and philosophy no longer present the same faces that once they showed, but the reasons for the new developments remain obscure. The purpose of the proposed volume is to clarify both causes and results of the changes that have taken place over the last century.

Experts in the fields will contribute studies of seven disciplines: American literature (Andrew Delbanco), African American Studies (Gerald Early), Comparative Literature (Pauline Yu), Art History (Thomas Crow), History (Anthony Grafton), Philosophy (Dagfinn Føllesdal and Michael Friedman), and Law (Sanford Levinson and Jack Balkin). Each of the seven fields demonstrates in its distinct way the process of division, fragmentation, re-imagining, and incorporation that has been taking place in the academic humanities over the last fifty years. The volume will include an overview essay by Steven Marcus (Columbia University) exploring the changes in the structural and intellectual life of the humanities over the past century.

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