7 ms·

I'm not that shocked honestly, I did a humanities degree and when I checked UChicago's departments they were large and pretty good but not really cutting edge o

I'm not that shocked honestly, I did a humanities degree and when I checked UChicago's departments they were large and pretty good but not really cutting edge or doing anything radical or interesting. Seems like they were coasting on their reputation for a while.

genghisjahn 1y ago
Honest question. What is considered radical or cutting edge in the humanities? I confess my ignorance upfront.
- sapphicsnail 1y ago
  I know for Classical literature it's largely the theoretical approach to interpreting texts. Lit theory is always evolving and tenured faculty don't always keep up with the changes. There are also new interdisciplinary departments that pop up. I imagine it's more varied in fields that study things created in the last 2000 years though.
  - terminalshort 1y ago
    By what metrics are literary theories judged against each other? What makes the new "cutting edge" ones better than the old? It seems like there is no actual advancement going on, but rather just ever changing fads, which is why I question the value of the entire enterprise.
    - bonoboTP 1y ago
      I don't want to defend humanities academia too much, but you could ask the same about pure math too. Of course the correctness of proofs is a checksum, but that doesn't answer which direction one should develop it or whether the thing you developed is found to be useful and interesting and elegant to other pure math people (often like a dozen worldwide). There's not further justification needed than the fact that other high prestige people find it cool and mind-blowing. Now my own opinion is that humanities academia is not a good concept. Literature, poetry, art are all great. But merely thinking and chatting about it is not a field. By all means go write great novels that express the human condition. But better go live a real life with adventure and real non-academics around you and write about that. Like Hemingway. Or write poems or paint impactful paintings. But simply writing about that is the equivalent of a reaction YouTuber. Now the steelman is that they make a complex literary work better understood by unfolding its layers, relating it to the context, analyzing its impact and influence etc. so the work becomes better and deeper understood.
      - DiscourseFan 1y ago
        Well yes but its not what you think. Philosophy as a field in the US has become too narrow. I remember taking a class in the German department on German Romanticism, which was actually very important for understanding later developments in German philosophy and some of the authors involved are even referenced directly by Hegel in his Lectures on Aesthetics. But when I was doing my Philosophy MA one of the faculty members was complaining once, in a class on Aesthetics, that they couldn’t teach German Romanticism as a class because the school had deemed it “too literary” and we just had one seminar on it. Its also the case that you wouldn’t have a great understanding of, say, Plato or maybe even Aristotle if you studied them in philosophy vs Classics, since in the latter you actually read and analyze the text at the level of the grammar and open up the complexity of the potential intepretations, whereas in Philosophy there is often a somewhat rote or dumbed down version of Plato and Aristotle taught to undergrads because the teachers don’t actually know any Greek. But that depends on the faculty and the course obviously, I just wouldn’t trust most philosophy departments to teach Plato well these days.
        bonoboTP 1y ago
        Yes, this is the curse of specialization due to ever more intellectual works in existence but the same amount of time per person. I think it's much better to learn in an integrated way, so history, art, science, politics, philosophy, technology, math, economics in a sort of horizontal, cross-cutting way. For example to understand the political relevance of some art movement, you need to know the history of the period, understand the art, the political climate, the philosophical underpinnings. To understand the impact of Darwin on his time, you need to know the historical context, and I'd argue you should actually understand evolution too (not in a comic book fashion, but quantitatively including our modern understanding and what he couldn't know then), also his religious background, you should understand what is Unitarianism and what is Anglicanism, how the Catholic Church reacted, and how their general situation was at that time, etc. etc. But in my experience academics really dislike interacting with their neighboring fields, they look down upon each other in a mutual way, or they simply don't see any benefit in an exchange because their publications are aimed at extremely narrow specialized journals, and a "hybrid" work will not fit either journal. Of course sometimes it works, but in my experience "interdisciplinary" is mostly a buzzword that admins like to use a lot and academics also pay lip service to but in reality they highly prefer just sticking to their well known bubble and be left alone.
    - BrenBarn 1y ago
      I agree that this is a problem with how humanities is often (or at least sometimes) done in colleges, and I suspect it's a significant contributor to the animus directed at the humanities. There has been a blurring of the line between fact and opinion such that some professors think it is worthwhile to teach students about their or other people's opinions, as if those opinions had value in themselves in the way that facts do. This isn't to say that opinions don't or can't have value, but just having someone say "I think X" or "Professor Blah thinks X" isn't in itself important by virtue of the content of X. This is especially true if the subject of the opinion (what it is about) is something that is rather far removed from the realm of fact. There is not really any meaningful sense in which a given text, for instance, "really does" instantiate a Jungian archetype or a Freudian urge or whatever. But I get the impression some humanities scholars think there is, that when they debate among themselves about such things, there is a "fact of the matter". Not all humanities scholarship is like this, but I think the proportion has increased over time. To my mind what it misses is that the important thing about such humanistic opinions is not their content in and of itself but the ways such opinions are formed and what kinds of "evidence" can be found to support them. An alternative goal would be for students to read things, engage with them from their own perspective, and learn how to solidify and articulate their response, as well as (importantly) to elucidate its sources both in themselves and in the text (i.e., "my reaction to this story is X, and I think that because the story says Y but also I have had experiences A, B and C that led me to think about things in such-and-such way"). This is likely more valuable than simply being taught someone else's opinion. I think this approach is sometimes shunned because it is perceived as navel-gazing or having students "just learn about themselves". But this perception may partly be due to a fear of acknowledging that what I said above is true, namely that opinions on such matters have little intrinsic value, and therefore the students' opinions are almost as valuable as those of more senior scholars. All this is basically to say that I think the humanities could be perceived as much more "valuable" and positive if they shifted more towards the idea of "these are some ways to have a rich life, gain an awareness of other people's opinions and how to infer their sources, and learn how to extract a meaningful experience by careful attention to what you're confronted with in life".
      - DiscourseFan 1y ago

genghisjahn 1y ago

Honest question. What is considered radical or cutting edge in the humanities? I confess my ignorance upfront.

sapphicsnail 1y ago
I know for Classical literature it's largely the theoretical approach to interpreting texts. Lit theory is always evolving and tenured faculty don't always keep up with the changes. There are also new interdisciplinary departments that pop up. I imagine it's more varied in fields that study things created in the last 2000 years though.
- terminalshort 1y ago
  By what metrics are literary theories judged against each other? What makes the new "cutting edge" ones better than the old? It seems like there is no actual advancement going on, but rather just ever changing fads, which is why I question the value of the entire enterprise.
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    I don't want to defend humanities academia too much, but you could ask the same about pure math too. Of course the correctness of proofs is a checksum, but that doesn't answer which direction one should develop it or whether the thing you developed is found to be useful and interesting and elegant to other pure math people (often like a dozen worldwide). There's not further justification needed than the fact that other high prestige people find it cool and mind-blowing. Now my own opinion is that humanities academia is not a good concept. Literature, poetry, art are all great. But merely thinking and chatting about it is not a field. By all means go write great novels that express the human condition. But better go live a real life with adventure and real non-academics around you and write about that. Like Hemingway. Or write poems or paint impactful paintings. But simply writing about that is the equivalent of a reaction YouTuber. Now the steelman is that they make a complex literary work better understood by unfolding its layers, relating it to the context, analyzing its impact and influence etc. so the work becomes better and deeper understood.
    - DiscourseFan 1y ago
      Well yes but its not what you think. Philosophy as a field in the US has become too narrow. I remember taking a class in the German department on German Romanticism, which was actually very important for understanding later developments in German philosophy and some of the authors involved are even referenced directly by Hegel in his Lectures on Aesthetics. But when I was doing my Philosophy MA one of the faculty members was complaining once, in a class on Aesthetics, that they couldn’t teach German Romanticism as a class because the school had deemed it “too literary” and we just had one seminar on it. Its also the case that you wouldn’t have a great understanding of, say, Plato or maybe even Aristotle if you studied them in philosophy vs Classics, since in the latter you actually read and analyze the text at the level of the grammar and open up the complexity of the potential intepretations, whereas in Philosophy there is often a somewhat rote or dumbed down version of Plato and Aristotle taught to undergrads because the teachers don’t actually know any Greek. But that depends on the faculty and the course obviously, I just wouldn’t trust most philosophy departments to teach Plato well these days.
      - bonoboTP 1y ago
        Yes, this is the curse of specialization due to ever more intellectual works in existence but the same amount of time per person. I think it's much better to learn in an integrated way, so history, art, science, politics, philosophy, technology, math, economics in a sort of horizontal, cross-cutting way. For example to understand the political relevance of some art movement, you need to know the history of the period, understand the art, the political climate, the philosophical underpinnings. To understand the impact of Darwin on his time, you need to know the historical context, and I'd argue you should actually understand evolution too (not in a comic book fashion, but quantitatively including our modern understanding and what he couldn't know then), also his religious background, you should understand what is Unitarianism and what is Anglicanism, how the Catholic Church reacted, and how their general situation was at that time, etc. etc. But in my experience academics really dislike interacting with their neighboring fields, they look down upon each other in a mutual way, or they simply don't see any benefit in an exchange because their publications are aimed at extremely narrow specialized journals, and a "hybrid" work will not fit either journal. Of course sometimes it works, but in my experience "interdisciplinary" is mostly a buzzword that admins like to use a lot and academics also pay lip service to but in reality they highly prefer just sticking to their well known bubble and be left alone.
  - BrenBarn 1y ago
    I agree that this is a problem with how humanities is often (or at least sometimes) done in colleges, and I suspect it's a significant contributor to the animus directed at the humanities. There has been a blurring of the line between fact and opinion such that some professors think it is worthwhile to teach students about their or other people's opinions, as if those opinions had value in themselves in the way that facts do. This isn't to say that opinions don't or can't have value, but just having someone say "I think X" or "Professor Blah thinks X" isn't in itself important by virtue of the content of X. This is especially true if the subject of the opinion (what it is about) is something that is rather far removed from the realm of fact. There is not really any meaningful sense in which a given text, for instance, "really does" instantiate a Jungian archetype or a Freudian urge or whatever. But I get the impression some humanities scholars think there is, that when they debate among themselves about such things, there is a "fact of the matter". Not all humanities scholarship is like this, but I think the proportion has increased over time. To my mind what it misses is that the important thing about such humanistic opinions is not their content in and of itself but the ways such opinions are formed and what kinds of "evidence" can be found to support them. An alternative goal would be for students to read things, engage with them from their own perspective, and learn how to solidify and articulate their response, as well as (importantly) to elucidate its sources both in themselves and in the text (i.e., "my reaction to this story is X, and I think that because the story says Y but also I have had experiences A, B and C that led me to think about things in such-and-such way"). This is likely more valuable than simply being taught someone else's opinion. I think this approach is sometimes shunned because it is perceived as navel-gazing or having students "just learn about themselves". But this perception may partly be due to a fear of acknowledging that what I said above is true, namely that opinions on such matters have little intrinsic value, and therefore the students' opinions are almost as valuable as those of more senior scholars. All this is basically to say that I think the humanities could be perceived as much more "valuable" and positive if they shifted more towards the idea of "these are some ways to have a rich life, gain an awareness of other people's opinions and how to infer their sources, and learn how to extract a meaningful experience by careful attention to what you're confronted with in life".
    - DiscourseFan 1y ago