What I DON’T Mean by “the Humanities”
An Open Letter to all Small Liberal Arts College Presidents
Dear Small Liberal Arts College President:
I want to clarify what I mean when I say “the Humanities.” For the past many years, I’ve had a number of conversations where it’s been clear to me that the person I’m talking to has one definition of “the Humanities” in mind, while I have a completely different definition of “the Humanities” in mind. Such a misunderstanding, I think, is at the heart of why the Humanities are in a death-spiral currently in American higher education (see here, here, and here).
Even at a Small Liberal Arts College (SLAC) such as your own, where traditionally the Humanities occupy a central role in the curriculum, the Humanities are being set aside to make way for what are taken to be more vocationally-oriented and career-enhancing—meaning really tuition-generating—courses of study. This trend not only puts boundaries on the educational experience of students, but could prove disastrous to American democracy itself.
A big statement, I know. But Humanities folk specialize in big statements.
Thus, I’d like to make plain to you, dear Madam/Sir, what I mean when I say “the Humanities.” My explanation will apply primarily to my own academic discipline of English. I cannot speak expertly for the other Humanities fields that study various aspects of human society and culture (those main ones being, as you know, Modern Languages, History, Philosophy, Religion, Classics). I’m confident, however, that what I have to say, after my 30-plus years of teaching and researching in the subjects of Literature and Writing, will be fully relevant to the Humanities in general.
Below, I’ll define first my terms—what I don’t and do mean by “the Humanities.” Second, I’ll discuss some of the problems caused at SLACs by this confusion over the meaning of “Humanities.” Third, I’ll offer a pair of suggestions not only for improving the overall lot of the Humanities in higher education, but specifically for restoring the Humanities, in an improved form, to their central place in the SLAC curriculum.
What I don’t mean when I say “the Humanities”
In my field of English, I don’t mean the study of literature as some kind of Great Books Appreciation Club where I ask students to marvel at the Artistic Beauty and Universal Truth purportedly found in literary works. (Many many decades ago, as an undergraduate English major, I was taught to approach Literature in this way.) Such a method of studying literature falls under the theory of New Criticism, the most basic tenet of which is to ignore the social context of a literary work to regard it, instead, as a static and timeless aesthetic object that has only one available meaning, no matter the reader.
If we apply a thinking brain to this principle for above a moment or two, it reveals itself as patently absurd.
New Criticism originated in the 1920s at, I’m sorry to say, a well-regarded midwestern SLAC. As a theory of reading literature, New Criticism dominated literary studies in the U.S. until the 1970s or so, when a range of other literary theories started to challenge it. New Critical principles, however, are still deeply baked into U.S. educational practices in middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities. I know that my students routinely step into literature classes expecting to be walked through principally a formalist study of the literature and, in the end, have the professor—me—tell them what each literary piece “really means.” That is, they want to be able to write down in their notes “universals” to memorize and then regurgitate in papers and on exams.
What could be more elitist and tedious? I know, as an undergraduate, I was often intimidated and bored to tears at the same time.
It’s this New Critical approach to the study of literature that has produced a general perception of English professors (and perhaps Humanities professors more widely) as eccentric, snooty, out-of-touch eggheads in Ivory Towers. It’s this airy-fairy conception of “the Humanities” that I find most people have in mind when the subject comes up for discussion. In my view, this kind of approach to literature and to the Humanities is deeply flawed and deserves to be abandoned. Not only because it’s educationally lackluster. But because this New Critical approach to human society and culture is a product of the white supremacist, capitalistic patriarchy enjoyed by the faculty at that aforementioned midwestern small college who invented it.
Yup, well-heeled white guys strike again.
What I do mean when I say “the Humanities”
Basically, I mean Cultural Studies—that is, situating and studying literature within the social context that produced it. (I mean, come on, big Duh.) Such an approach to literature is a complex educational endeavor, one that involves not just the study of literary texts but texts of all kinds from all manner of humanistic, sociological, scientific, and fine arts fields. A significant part of Cultural Studies is asking students to investigate how humans construct and are constructed by culture, and how humans use and are used by language. Thus, Cultural Studies entails the examination of power and hegemony, followed hard upon by issues of social justice.
Now we’re talkin’ some real educational juice.
In order to enact Cultural Studies, a range of literary, critical, and cultural theories (not just the naïve reading of New Criticism) must be taught to students and then applied by them to the literature and its surrounding culture. Such theories and skills include Reader Response, Feminism, Critical Race Theory, Marxism, Queer Theory, Deconstruction, and many more. Teaching these theories is a daunting task but, in my long experience of it, one that brings tremendous educational benefits to students. Instead of being passive receivers of expert opinion—the New Critical model—they become active players in the business of textual and cultural analysis and interpretation. In short, they are required to formulate, articulate, and defend their own critical viewpoints on any given subject. If that isn’t higher education, what is? What more vital, valuable, and transferable educational skill is there? What more fundamental social trait do we have?
We construct our reality through language and culture. Informing and involving students in that quintessential human activity strikes me as Job #1 of higher education, especially in the liberal arts. More than training students to be employees and consumers, we must help enable them become informed and critical citizens of democracy. These two educational goals are not mutually exclusive—but the latter is, by far, the more important. What I mean when I say “the Humanities,” then, is this facility to read society astutely and to act within society for the common good. Such Humanistic education, in my view, brings about, among others, the following valuable outcomes.
Transferable job-market skills:
1) The ability to read complex texts for deep understanding.
2) The ability to assemble and compare a wide range of ideas.
3) The ability to discern accurate assessments of circumstances and evidence-based viewpoints from viewpoints that are founded in fabrication, deception, faulty or far-fetched thinking.
4) The ability to recognize, assemble, and evaluate evidence that is sound and useful.
5) The ability to formulate an informed critical opinion on a subject.
6) The ability to formulate a cogent and evidence-based argument to support that critical opinion.
7) The ability to communicate, in writing and orally, cogent analytical argumentation.
8) The ability to think outside the box of the status quo.
9) The ability to collaborate, a key practice of sociability.
Skills contributing to the Public Good:
1) The ability to recognize and resist social and political bullshit.
2) The ability to live and work amid diversity—of peoples, cultures, languages, worldviews, personal identities, religious faiths, political convictions, and many more.
3) The ability to deal with ambiguity.
4) The ability to participate in, rather than being victimized by, the construction of culture—e.g. laws, polity, civic institutions, economic structure, social practices, and much more.
5) The ability to think critically, behave with empathy, and pursue many kinds of social justice.
6) The ability to analyze, question, and challenge the status quo.
7) The ability to deliberate, a key practice of democracy.
Burying one’s head in the sand
When I have conversations with people about the Humanities, and when those people assume that what I mean by “the Humanities” is what I emphatically don’t mean by “the Humanities,” these people almost inevitably accuse me of burying my head in the sand. They will either say that to me directly or strongly imply that about me. That is, that I’m an Ivory Tower egghead foolishly ignoring the grim economic realities facing higher education. That I’m simply not being pragmatic enough when it comes to safeguarding the fiscal survival of the College. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, dear SLAC President, if you’re thinking that about me right now.
So let’s take stock of where we are. Many people, both outside and inside the Academy, seem convinced that: 1) Humanistic studies are hollow and 2) their practitioners are ninnies.
Sound about right?
As a result of such beliefs, the Humanities now—when taught at all—are being treated more as a character-building educational accessory or indulgence rather than as a crucial and structurally prominent, if not core, element of higher education. That is to say, the Humanities have dwindled to being a bit of college-experience fluff. A General Education requirement to be endured for a semester or two, more or less “for your own good.” Once thriving majors, such as English and History, are now arcane curiosities. Traditionally smaller departments, such as Philosophy, Religion, Classics, are disappearing altogether. Even large departments, such as Modern Languages, are being severely trimmed or getting the ax outright.
The same diminishing is happening to the Performing and Visual Arts. These fields aren’t considered to be serious academic subjects or venues for meaningful student learning beyond, perhaps, the acquisition of a few technical skills. Instead, they’re seen as fun things to do. Pleasant extracurriculars. Right up there with intramural basketball.
So why go overboard on the Humanities and the Arts when determining your operating budget, right, dear Madam/Sir?
Allow me to push back by flipping the head-burying premise.
Compelling arguments have been made (for example, here) that by over-capitulating to the market forces of neoliberalism, colleges and universities cease to perform their core functions as institutions of higher learning and are reduced, instead, to being little more than neoliberal finishing schools. What I’m arguing here is that one of those core functions of higher education, especially the liberal arts, is the humanistic capacity and skill-set I endorse above—namely, the ability to read, analyze, and critique culture and power. Put into different words: the ability to be an informed citizen participating in democracy.
If opportunities to encourage the development of informed citizens participating in democracy are being erased from higher education by the steady takeover of neoliberal vocationalism—opportunities such as the study of the Humanities—well, the uncomfortable question then must become: just who is burying whose head in the sand?
I think it no exaggeration to say that a democratic society, a fair economy, and a livable environment have been under assault by hyper-free-market neoliberalism since roughly 1980. Globally, billions of people are disenfranchised and impoverished. The climate crisis is now acute. And due to the astronomical degree of wealth inequality created by neoliberal financial practices, populations around the world—America foremost among them—have become vulnerable to the pseudo-populist bombast of authoritarian political thugs.
Such as you-know-who.
In the face of such immediate existential threats, do SLACs really want to keep graduating tractable corporate salary-slaves and debt-ridden “entrepreneurs”—few of whom enjoy adequate healthcare benefits?
Is that what higher education is all about?
A pair of suggestions
The problem, of course, is where is that fine line between capitulation and resistance to neoliberal pressures?
I’m not stupidly claiming that having students read some hooks, Butler, and Foucault will turn everything around (although it sure as hell couldn’t hurt). The Humanities won’t save the planet or ride heroically to the financial rescue of every SLAC.
What I am saying, though, is that the Humanities, as an educational practice, can be usefully and responsibly branded.
Not what you expected an impractical egghead to say, eh, Madam/Mr. President?
Can we not convince prospective students—and their parents—that integral to the increased advantages brought on by higher education is an expanded view of wellbeing—that is, from individual wellbeing to social wellbeing? Is it such a stretch—such blasphemy—to suggest that the pursuit of neoliberal possessive individualism brings down bad consequences on everyone’s head?
I’m not talking indoctrination here. I’m not advocating for any kind of pinko-professor brainwashing the puppets on FOX News rail against daily. I’m simply proposing that we do a better job at what we always claim we’re doing in higher education, namely, exposing students to a wide-ranging Marketplace of Ideas that is grounded in evidence-based argumentation.
My one tweak to the formula is this: Let’s explicitly market and genuinely offer perceptive citizenship as a fundamental and profound benefit of higher education.
How might this be done? I have two fairly modest courses of action in mind that, in all honesty, seem quite promising to me.
Suggestion #1: emphasize Cultural Studies in the curriculum of Humanities departments.
Already, to varying degrees, Humanities departments and individual faculty pursue the postmodern practices of Cultural Studies over the modern practices of New Criticism—or whatever its essentialist equivalent is in each Humanities field. Thus, my suggestion of emphasizing the practices of Cultural Studies would not entail a drastic overhaul of academic programs.
I readily admit, as well, that my suggestion is but one possible way of enhancing the standing of the Humanities in the Academy. Other faculty can recommend different modes of study, other than Cultural Studies, as a way to up our game and profile. There are many excellent ideas currently in circulation (see, for example, here).
For my money, though, the best and most responsible path forward is the pursuit of perceptive citizenship by means of Cultural Studies.
To be more specific about what I’m recommending educationally, by Cultural Studies I mean the pursuit of Critical Pedagogy: a teaching approach that attempts to help students question and challenge domination via the examination of beliefs and practices that dominate. This examination includes a critical inspection of the very educational methodologies by which they are being taught at the moment. (And, yes, this process can be very scary for teachers.) Such an approach to teaching is a theory and practice of helping students achieve critical consciousness.
Going hand-in-hand with Critical Pedagogy is liberatory education: a pedagogy of emancipation centered around principles and practices for social change and transformation. Through education based in consciousness raising and engagement with oppressive forces, students both think through what constitutes a fair and equitable society and undertake steps to bring about real change. (And, yes, this process can be very scary for students.) For a quick primer on Critical Pedagogy and its prominent theorists, see here.
These educational methods can take many forms, depending on the Humanities discipline and the individual faculty member. However, overall, I think it’s time for Humanities departments to identify, accentuate, and promote these practices in their departmental curriculum. The next step then would be for Humanities departments to make significant structural connections with other departments and programs in this humanistic endeavor.
For example, faculty from across Humanities departments could design a “Cultural Studies & Social Justice” major, minor, or concentration. In building such a program, they could work as well with faculty from the Social Sciences—and maybe even from Math and the Natural Sciences. Such cross-pollination would help break down the artificial silos created by academic “disciplines.” (The Periodic Table, after all, can be every bit as dictatorial as Paradise Lost.) If an entirely new program is too much for your college curriculum to bear, perhaps, more simply, faculty could create a “Certificate in Social Justice” for students to fulfill by taking courses in various majors.
Whatever the vehicle, such formal studies would put the Humanities, Cultural Studies, and the notion of perceptive citizenship on the structural map of your college curriculum.
Suggestion #2: to expand on what I say above, a SLAC must brand, promote, and structurally include Cultural Studies as a key element of its educational purpose and mission.
Currently, many SLACs make little effort to promote the Humanities to prospective students and parents, let alone Humanities of the kind for which I advocate above. This silence is perplexing to me. To ask a pointed question: Are we unable to brand the very educational purpose we claim to embody according to the high-sounding Mission Statements we plaster all over our websites?
The point of Critical Pedagogy is to produce—what we often call in our Mission Statements—autonomous thinkers. The aim of liberatory education is to create—to call upon another often-used Mission Statement phrase—discerning moral agents and active citizens of a democratic society. It would seem that humanistic study focusing on cultural critique, the examination of hegemonic power, and the pursuit of social justice—all geared toward safeguarding democracy and the survival of the planet—accords exceedingly well with the goals and ideals routinely expressed in our SLAC Mission Statements. Such a course of study inevitably involves students in the deliberation of—again, as our Mission Statements so frequently declare—human dignity and compassion unlimited by cultural, racial, sexual, religious or economic barriers, and directed toward an engagement with the central issues of our time.
All very inspirational, no?
Why, then, do SLACs not prize and feature such learning? Why not add Cultural Studies among the signature educational ventures of a college, making it, as well, part of a marketing strategy? Why not work to dispel the popular myth of the Humanities being a minor, esoteric, and basically useless pursuit? Why not pitch to the public, instead, a hard-hitting, socially accountable brand of Humanities that works for equity and justice—those grand American ideals?
As I remark above, given the state of the world at the moment, I don’t think my suggestion is a fanciful, head-buried-in-the-sand, silly idea. I don’t think most people want to buy the stark binary choice neoliberal forces work to impose on us—namely, that either you can have a job or you can have a just society and habitable environment. That’s nonsense. Along with branding and marketing career opportunities for your graduates, you should brand and market cultural literacy as well. Again, these two endeavors are by no means mutually exclusive.
Nor should they be.
But maybe we have our priorities in reverse?
Just maybe cultural literacy should outshine career prep?
To close
I am well aware, dear SLAC President, that I’m not recommending minor changes here. But, then again, minor changes don’t get major things done. I’m likewise well aware that my suggestions haven’t a snowball’s chance of happening unless you and your Trustees—who are, unfortunately, all too often a bunch of business guys—jump in with both feet to make such changes happen. So I’m not holding my breath. But I will leave you with one last and, I hope, penetrating question.
What do you want to give your child: chains or wings?
Your Most Humble & Obedient Servant,
KC