New Literary History focuses on theory and interpretation-the reasons for literary change, the definitions of periods, and the evolution of styles, conventions, and genres. Throughout its history, NLH has always resisted short-lived trends and subsuming ideologies. By delving into the theoretical bases of practical criticism, the journal reexamines the relation between past works and present critical and theoretical needs.
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Volume 36, Number 1, Winter 2005
Special Issue: Essays on the Humanities
CONTENTS:
Stock, Brian:
- Ethics and the Humanities: Some Lessons of Historical Experience
Abstract: This essay discusses the difficulty of teaching ethics through literature based on the models for such instruction provided by the Hellenistic and late ancient periods. Some reasons are given for the contemporary lack of confidence in the teaching of ethics by means of the humanities, in particular, for the abandonment of historical disciplines in ethical debates. The educational method used in teaching ethics in the Graeco-Roman world is briefly outlined, after which a comparison is made between the attitude toward reading and ethics in Seneca and Augustine. The essay ends with reflections on the differences between ancient and modern instruction in ethics through reading: these include the lack of a secular contemplative tradition in literary studies and the implicit assumption that the reader is not ethically responsible for what is read.
Harpham, Geoffrey Galt, 1946- :
- Beneath and Beyond the "Crisis in the Humanities"
Abstract: One way of focusing the perennial crisis in the humanities is to think of it as a crisis of rationale, an inability by humanists to articulate what they do in a way that makes clear its distinctiveness and value to the larger culture. This paper attempts to establish the elements of a rationale. The first is the fact that the object of humanistic study is best conceived as a "text," a material and public medium produced in the past and requiring disciplined attention. The second is the premise that humanistic understanding entails a speculative recuperation of a complex, deep, and overdetermined subject, situated in a particular time and place. Third, humanistic understanding requires the reader to engage with the mind of the author in a way that fosters self-understanding, strengthens and enriches our imaginative powers, and gives a distinctive kind of intellectual pleasure.
Culler, Jonathan D. :
- In Need of a Name? A Response to Geoffrey Harpham
Abstract: Geoffrey Harpham critiques humanists' complacency or defeatism about the crisis of the humanities but displays one of the most powerful resources of the humanities in his own conversion of the crisis into a defining strength of humanistic disciplines. Where his defense goes wrong is in linking the humanities to an ideology of the human. How can humanists celebrate and expound the most exciting developments in the humanities in recent years if the term humanities ties them to such an ideology? Would the humanities do better with a new name?
Edmundson, Mark, 1952- :
- Humanities Past, Present - and Future
Abstract: Edmundson's response to Geoffrey Harpham praises his piece for its conviction, sincerity, and for its striking thesis about the uses of the humanities. Edmundson finds nothing to disagree with in the piece, but only wants to extend it. He wants to encourage professors to see humanisitic study not only as a way to understand the past, but also as a way to shape the future.
Chow, Rey :
- "An Addiction from Which We Never Get Free"
Abstract: Through brief discussions of aspects of the putative crisis in the humanities -- the definition of the humanities as such, the relation of colonialism to humanistic pursuits, and the dominance of information -- the author asks what knowledge itself amounts to in the early 21st-century. Following Foucault, she proposes that humanistic knowledge be rethought as a part of a larger historical problematic, one that will by necessity undergo a process of transformation in relation to other types of knowledge. Adopting insights from Bill Readings, she suggests that thought/thinking is the most critical thing to redeem in such a process.
Fludernik, Monika:
- Threatening the University--The Liberal Arts and the Economization of Culture
Abstract: In response to Geoffrey Harpham's plea for a greater effort to explain the humanities to the public in order to secure funding for them, Fludernik argues that, useful as that proposal is, it emphasizes the distinctness of the humanities vis a vis the sciences too much. She herself insists that all disciplines, scientific and otherwise, share a common ground in servicing human curiosity about the word and humanity, and that therefore public relations efforts should emphasize the long-term uses of academic endeavor.
McGann, Jerome J. :
- Culture and Technology: The Way We Live Now, What Is to Be Done?
Abstract: The paper addresses the so-called "Crisis in the Humanities" in the context of two of its most apparent symptoms: the digital transformation of our museums and archives, and the explicitly parallel "Crisis in Tenure and Publishing" that has more recently come to attention. It introduces and frames a practical proposal, now underway, for dealing with both. This is the NINES initiative: Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship. The rationale of NINES is described, including the initial set of digital tools now in active development. The general aim of NINES is to move the rethinking of literary and cultural studies, method as well as theory, by establishing an institutionalized mechanism (peer-reviewed) for new kinds of digital-based analytic and interpretive practices.
Freeman, Elizabeth, 1966- :
- Monsters, Inc.: Notes on the Neoliberal Arts Education
Abstract: This essay reads the film Monsters, Inc. (Pixar Studios, 2001), as an allegory for the humanities in the age of global capitalism. Using the film's ending and Citibank advertisements as examples, Freeman argues that corporations have appropriated many of the classic ideas about the value of a humanities education. She claims that the corporate world recasts these values in the language of the market such that the ideal corporate citizen has what she calls a "neoliberal arts education" designed to facilitate people skills in service and trade relations. With the film's relations between monster and child characters as a touchstone, Freeman contends that humanities practitioners must risk 1) addressing the positive role of bodies, desire, and psychoanalytic transference as they affect teaching and learning in the humanities disciplines, and 2) acknowledging how these energies disrupt the smooth transfer of knowledge into commodities and students into salespeople.
Stewart, Susan (Susan A.), 1952- :
- Thoughts on the Role of the Humanities in Contemporary Life
Abstract: This response to New Literary History's call for thoughts on the current crisis in the humanities roots humanistic study in the circumstances and consequences of judgment. The humanities are discussed in relation to the concerns of religion and science-- with particular attention to the pressing need for humanist responses to the rise of fundamentalism among the former and the rise of technologies intervening in the life process among the latter.
Harpham, Geoffrey Galt, 1946- :
- NLH Response:
Morris, Meaghan:
- Humanities for Taxpayers: Some Problems
Abstract: The reminder that crisis is a permanent feature of the humanities is a useful corrective to arguments that treat the problems we face as intellectual and internal in kind (the rise and fall of theory, disciplines versus studies, the decline of a public vocation, etc). However, if a sense of crisis "in" the humanities is generated by the critical mission itself, it does not follow that the challenges posed "to" the humanities in universities world-wide today are of this kind. Since the early 1980s, the global mainstream of nationally regulated, state-funded higher education has progressively been transformed by a neo-liberal policy movement that not only redistributes funding away from the humanities but seeks to alter the material context and framework of values in which all research is produced. Inducing a managerial version of permanent revolution, the new order conjoins global competition with a promise of community benefit or (in countries where the notion is relevant), "taxpayer" accountability; in the process, the ideal of academic independence is explicitly overthrown. Examining experiences of this process in Australia and Hong Kong, this article asks what happens when humanities scholars have no choice but to conceptualize their work from perspectives of interest to industry on the one hand, and the public or the community on the other.
Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich:
- Slow and Brilliant: Reactions to Geoffrey Galt Harpham's Diagnosis of the Humanities Today
Abstract: A mainly affirmative--but complexifying--reaction to Harpham's diagnosis of the present-day humanities. Implicitly questioning the value and viability of the concept "method / methodology" for the Humanities and Arts today and in general, the essay discusses [and partly challenges] the "methodological" status of humanistic key concepts and core practices such as "interpretation," "reading," "text," and "otherness" in Harpham's conception; it takes issue with some normative implications in what Harpham believes should be the value of being "human" and, depending on it, the specific professional competence of the Humanist; above all, this reponse argues for an elitist self-understanding of the Humanities and Arts as a practice of swift intellectual slowness and of risk-taking.