Scholarship on the Humanities
This program supports scholarship and research into the
history, evolution, state, and meaning of the humanities. It explores such
questions as: What role do the humanities play in American life? How have the
humanities evolved over time? How should the humanities be defined in the
twenty-first century? What can the humanities teach us about life, meaning, and
the human condition?
These questions do not have absolute answers, but in
supporting scholarship in this area, the Academy is generating thoughtful
dialogue and reflection about disciplines – history, art, language, literature,
philosophy, religion – that have been with us since the dawn of human culture
and civilization. Project leaders Patricia Meyer Spacks (University of
Virginia) and Steven Marcus (Columbia University) oversee a series of
coordinated analyses produced by teams of leading scholars. Taken together,
these research projects provide complementary narratives about the emergence,
purpose, legitimacy, and limitations of the humanities.
Thus far, the Academy has produced two collections of
essays on the recent history of humanistic academic disciplines.
The Humanities and the Dynamics of Inclusion since World War II,
edited by David Hollinger (University of California, Berkeley) and published in
2006 by The Johns Hopkins University Press, examines the effects on humanistic
disciplines of the new forms of diversity that developed in American colleges
and universities in the twentieth century. The second volume, edited by
Patricia Meyer Spacks (University of Virginia) and published as the
Spring 2006 issue of Dædalus, provides narrative
histories of seven humanities disciplines in an effort to illuminate and better
understand the humanities today.
Work is underway on a third volume, which will
highlight the importance of the humanities in contemporary American life. Some
of the essays will be devoted to assessing the data compiled by the
Humanities Indicators and the
Humanities Departmental Survey projects.
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