Have the Humanities lost their way? It was the Humanities, you’ll recall, that brought us the notion of a liberal arts education. An education, the notion went, was directed specifically at the strengthening or betterment of our intellectual and emotional lives. This emphasis has over the years filtered into non-Humanities disciplines. Is this a good thing for our students, or have we lost something in the process? We’ll discuss the role of the Humanities in today’s institutions of higher learning, asking what if anything they alone have to offer, whether this is a Good or not, and how we might work to implement (or not) whatever alterations we might have in our course.
