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It's deeply ironic to me that academic humanities is collapsing, while in popular culture, the hunger for humanities is ever growing. Here's some great example

It's deeply ironic to me that academic humanities is collapsing, while in popular culture, the hunger for humanities is ever growing. Here's some great examples from Youtube: OTH: How Bloodborne Transforms the Myth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glP-gH_n3Yc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glP-gH_n3Yc OTH: Bloodborne vs. Gothic Horror — Reanimating a Genre https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glP-gH_n3Yc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glP-gH_n3Yc Sicario: The Importance of Borders https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn5vK_tUg3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn5vK_tUg3w Collateral: Taming the Bull of Masculinity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy2imk4PXic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy2imk4PXic I'm sure everyone has their own pet theories about the article, but it seems clear to me that there is no lack of demand for accessible humanities.

317070 7y ago
I think 'accessible' being the key word here. I read the article, and as someone who does not have English as a first language and therefore know next to nothing on its literature, I am still amazed by its humanities focus on dissecting old texts and poems. Academic English in this respect looks very different to me than academic Dutch or French. I mean, this is a thing that should never happen to a field "looking for truth": https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341 On the other hand, having universities educate for the needs of the economy is one of the stupider, short-sighted things happening now.
- mcguire 7y ago
  Your link: "uMatrix has prevented the following page from loading: https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=1_cc-session_21fee4d0-f420-4344-902d-3f4401eb33bd https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=1_... without parameters = https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers sessionId = 1_cc-session_21fee4d0-f420-4344-902d-3f4401eb33bd" I don't know what that means, but it means something.
- rdtsc 7y ago
  > On the other hand, having universities educate for the needs of the economy is one of the stupider, short-sighted things happening now. What to do though? At some point after graduation the students would need to find someone to hire them and pay them a living wage. Even if they graduate without any debt like they might in Europe or other countries, what do they do next? Sure, the economy needs editors, and perhaps history majors could make good managers or programmers with some training, but it would be an uphill battle for them. Most people I know who graduated with a humanities degrees ended up in jobs they hated. They only ones that liked their jobs stayed in the academia. But how sustainable is that, I wonder... At least in US with the govt guaranteeing student loans, there is a perverse incentive for the universities to lie and tell students to apply and that everything will be fine, just so they get their hands on that loan money.
  - cafard 7y ago
    I worked for many years next office down from a programmer who dropped out of a doctoral program in history of religion. A couple of my best friends studied humanities in college and went on to work with computers. I was myself a liberal arts major in college, and have made my living first in tech support, then in systems administration and programming. And no, I don't hate my job. I very much enjoyed school, but had no desire to stick around an teach.
barry-cotter 7y ago
Are the academic humanities even collapsing outside the US? The U.K. has five times as many history graduates as the US with a fifth of the population. Presumably someone is teaching those students. Going from massive efflorescence and overproduction of PhDs to very large overproduction of PhDs doesn’t seem that big a deal. If people want to analyse pop culture as literature and undergraduates don’t find the classes appealing how is that a problem? I’m sure if you want to study classic literature now it’s much easier than it was in 1950 or 1970. There are certainly as many tenured instructors as in 1950, probably more than there were in 1970. And if you want to treat Sicario, Bloodborne or Collateral as literature who’s stopping you? The chances of these series being remembered in 50 years are low so the secondary literature will be almost entirely forgotten but if people are enjoying themselves no harm. The collapse of the academic humanities is at least in part retreating up there own hole. English as the study of great art, timeless topics and eternal verities is reasonably healthy, if a sideline in the academic humanities beside Bourdieu, Foucault and Nietzsche but it’s possible to study great books of difficult at university. If you just want to study it Harold Bloom and others in the same tradition wrote books and they can still be read. Going from 20x the number of scholars in 1950 to 10x is not an extinction event.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
neonate 7y ago
The appetite is for good stories and songs and poems, not theory.

317070 7y ago

I think 'accessible' being the key word here. I read the article, and as someone who does not have English as a first language and therefore know next to nothing on its literature, I am still amazed by its humanities focus on dissecting old texts and poems. Academic English in this respect looks very different to me than academic Dutch or French. I mean, this is a thing that should never happen to a field "looking for truth": https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341 On the other hand, having universities educate for the needs of the economy is one of the stupider, short-sighted things happening now.

mcguire 7y ago
Your link: "uMatrix has prevented the following page from loading: https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=1_cc-session_21fee4d0-f420-4344-902d-3f4401eb33bd https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=1_... without parameters = https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers sessionId = 1_cc-session_21fee4d0-f420-4344-902d-3f4401eb33bd" I don't know what that means, but it means something.
rdtsc 7y ago
> On the other hand, having universities educate for the needs of the economy is one of the stupider, short-sighted things happening now. What to do though? At some point after graduation the students would need to find someone to hire them and pay them a living wage. Even if they graduate without any debt like they might in Europe or other countries, what do they do next? Sure, the economy needs editors, and perhaps history majors could make good managers or programmers with some training, but it would be an uphill battle for them. Most people I know who graduated with a humanities degrees ended up in jobs they hated. They only ones that liked their jobs stayed in the academia. But how sustainable is that, I wonder... At least in US with the govt guaranteeing student loans, there is a perverse incentive for the universities to lie and tell students to apply and that everything will be fine, just so they get their hands on that loan money.
- cafard 7y ago
  I worked for many years next office down from a programmer who dropped out of a doctoral program in history of religion. A couple of my best friends studied humanities in college and went on to work with computers. I was myself a liberal arts major in college, and have made my living first in tech support, then in systems administration and programming. And no, I don't hate my job. I very much enjoyed school, but had no desire to stick around an teach.

barry-cotter 7y ago

Are the academic humanities even collapsing outside the US? The U.K. has five times as many history graduates as the US with a fifth of the population. Presumably someone is teaching those students. Going from massive efflorescence and overproduction of PhDs to very large overproduction of PhDs doesn’t seem that big a deal. If people want to analyse pop culture as literature and undergraduates don’t find the classes appealing how is that a problem? I’m sure if you want to study classic literature now it’s much easier than it was in 1950 or 1970. There are certainly as many tenured instructors as in 1950, probably more than there were in 1970. And if you want to treat Sicario, Bloodborne or Collateral as literature who’s stopping you? The chances of these series being remembered in 50 years are low so the secondary literature will be almost entirely forgotten but if people are enjoying themselves no harm. The collapse of the academic humanities is at least in part retreating up there own hole. English as the study of great art, timeless topics and eternal verities is reasonably healthy, if a sideline in the academic humanities beside Bourdieu, Foucault and Nietzsche but it’s possible to study great books of difficult at university. If you just want to study it Harold Bloom and others in the same tradition wrote books and they can still be read. Going from 20x the number of scholars in 1950 to 10x is not an extinction event.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

neonate 7y ago

The appetite is for good stories and songs and poems, not theory.