What's Happened to the Humanities? [Hardcover]

Alvin B. Kernan (Editor), Harold Shapiro (Foreword), William Bowen (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 1997

This volume of specially commissioned essays presents the thoughts of some of the most distinguished American academic commentators on the fundamental changes that have taken place in the humanities in the latter part of the 20th century. In the transformation of American higher education from the university to the "demoversity", the humanities have become a less and less important part of education, a matter established by a statistical appendix and elaborated on in several of the essays. The individual essays offer close observations into how the humanities have been affected by declining academic status, by demographic shifts, by reductions in financial support, and by changing communication technology. They also explore the effect of these forces on books, libraries and the phenomenology of reading in the age of images. The volume concludes with studies of the new social arrangements that have developed in the humanities in recent years: the attack on professionalism and the effort to transform the humanities into the social conscience of academia and even of the nation as a whole.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The current state of the humanities in American colleges and universities is the topic of this book, which contains 11 scholarly essays originally written for presentation at the National Humanities Center and at Boston University. Each contributor is a recognized humanities scholar, and, though a few of the essays are obscure, most are lucid and well documented. All 11 contributors have two premises in common: that their field of specialization occupies a less important position in academe today than it did midway through the century and that academic authority has eroded in order to give "power to the many." Kernan's clear, persuasive introduction is accompanied by tables and charts that show the declining number of humanities degrees awarded at the baccalaureate and graduate levels in the United States over the past 30 years. For academic libraries.?Joyce W. Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Kernan gathers original essays by Lynn Hunt, John D'Arms, Francis Oakley, Margery Sabin, Carla Hesse, Denis Donoghue, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Frank Kermode, Christopher Ricks, Louis Menand, and David Bromwich on subjects ranging from demographics and funding for the humanities to specific disciplines' methodologies and philosophies. The cast of authors are a bit more anti than pro postmodernism, so this volume could be balanced by others, such as Bill Reading's The University in Ruins. But Kernan's contributors supply useful perspectives about the recent history of U.S. universities and their potential future, of particular interest to readers fascinated by university trends and the sometimes noisy battles within academe over the institutions' objectives and the meaning and value of the humanities. Mary Carroll

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 268 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; First Edition, edition (January 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691011559
• ISBN-13: 978-0691011554
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,026,117 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Important Book, May 28, 2010

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Richard B. Schwartz (Columbia, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: What's Happened to the Humanities? (Hardcover)

Though now somewhat dated (the fervor over Theory has now abated to a considerable degree), this is a superb set of essays on the title's question. Edited by a distinguished scholar who has also served as a graduate dean, Alvin Kernan, the volume includes essays by such important commentators as Denis Donoghue, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Frank Kermode, Christopher Ricks and Louis Menand.

All of the essays are worth reading. I found particularly useful Lynn Hunt's piece on the impact of demographics on the humanities (which is filled with interesting and important data on enrollments, budgets and curricula); John D'Arms article on the decline of funding for humanities research (his piece and Hunt's being frequently cited elsewhere); Louis Menand's study of the demise of disciplinary authority, Gertrude Himmelfarb's mini-history of Theory and David Bromwich's essay on politicization.

There is also an appendix containing a useful set of tables on baccalaureate and Ph.D. production from 1966-1993. Many of the essays explore issues in American educational history above and beyond specific matters affecting the humanities, e.g., the etiology of vocationalism.

This is an important book for everyone interested in the plight of the humanities in American higher education.