Author : Helen Small
Publisher : Academic
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 41,60 MB
Release : 2013-10-03
Category : Education
ISBN : 0199683867
In The Value of the Humanities prize-winning critic Helen Small assesses the value of the Humanities, eloquently examining five historical arguments in defence of the Humanities.
Author : Martha C. Nussbaum
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 49,96 MB
Release : 2016-11-08
Category : Education
ISBN : 069117332X
In this short and powerful book, celebrated philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes a passionate case for the importance of the liberal arts at all levels of education. Historically, the humanities have been central to education because they have been seen as essential for creating competent democratic citizens. But recently, Nussbaum argues, thinking about the aims of education has gone disturbingly awry in the United States and abroad. We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world. In response to this dire situation, Nussbaum argues that we must resist efforts to reduce education to a tool of the gross national product. Rather, we must work to reconnect education to the humanities in order to give students the capacity to be true democratic citizens of their countries and the world. In a new preface, Nussbaum explores the current state of humanistic education globally and shows why the crisis of the humanities has far from abated. Translated into over twenty languages, Not for Profit draws on the stories of troubling—and hopeful—global educational developments. Nussbaum offers a manifesto that should be a rallying cry for anyone who cares about the deepest purposes of education.
Author : Laurie Grobman
Publisher :
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 26,47 MB
Release : 2020
Category : Education, Higher
ISBN : 0812251989
"The book is an academic/career guide. It argues for the importance of the humanities for job skills and for participation in civic life and politics. The book will help students speak persuasively about the usefulness of their humanities degrees"--
Author : Eric Touya de Marenne
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 159 pages
File Size : 43,23 MB
Release : 2016-12-01
Category : Education
ISBN : 147582503X
Countering the perception that the humanities are unessential, this volume contends that their well-being has not only academic but also cultural, political, and existential ramifications. Our technologically-driven world possesses the means of its own destruction, while economic and financial policies undermine the very existence of our democracy. At the same time, the postmodern and post-human age fundamentally challenges our ability and legitimacy to conceive future ideals. It is within this context that the humanities provide essential paths through which the teaching and knowledge of other academic fields such as STEM and economics must be re-envisioned. In short, the humanities must be brought back to the center of academic life. The political and pedagogical implications of this interdisciplinary study thus entail a renewed critique to rethink the relation between higher education, society, and the world at large (politically, economically, scientifically, and technologically) and the importance of the humanities within it.At the heart of this reconsideration, the humanities’ and humanity’s fate and future become one.
Author : Roosevelt Montas
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 30,98 MB
Release : 2023-03-21
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0691224390
A Dominican-born academic tells the story of how the Great Books transformed his life—and why they have the power to speak to people of all backgrounds What is the value of a liberal education? Traditionally characterized by a rigorous engagement with the classics of Western thought and literature, this approach to education is all but extinct in American universities, replaced by flexible distribution requirements and ever-narrower academic specialization. Many academics attack the very idea of a Western canon as chauvinistic, while the general public increasingly doubts the value of the humanities. In Rescuing Socrates, Dominican-born American academic Roosevelt Montás tells the story of how a liberal education transformed his life, and offers an intimate account of the relevance of the Great Books today, especially to members of historically marginalized communities. Montás emigrated from the Dominican Republic to Queens, New York, when he was twelve and encountered the Western classics as an undergraduate in Columbia University’s renowned Core Curriculum, one of America’s last remaining Great Books programs. The experience changed his life and determined his career—he went on to earn a PhD in English and comparative literature, serve as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum, and start a Great Books program for low-income high school students who aspire to be the first in their families to attend college. Weaving together memoir and literary reflection, Rescuing Socrates describes how four authors—Plato, Augustine, Freud, and Gandhi—had a profound impact on Montás’s life. In doing so, the book drives home what it’s like to experience a liberal education—and why it can still remake lives.
Author : Marilynne Robinson
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 46,27 MB
Release : 2018-02-20
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 0374717788
New essays on theological, political, and contemporary themes, by the Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display. What Are We Doing Here? is a call for Americans to continue the tradition of those great thinkers and to remake American political and cultural life as “deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still.”
Author : Rens Bod
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 23,18 MB
Release : 2013
Category : Education
ISBN : 0199665214
Offers the first overarching history of the humanities from Antiquity to the present.
Author : Charles H. Lohr
Publisher : SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 35,40 MB
Release : 1988
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 8884503671
Author : Bruce S. Thornton
Publisher : Open Road Media
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 24,23 MB
Release : 2014-05-27
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1497651603
With humor, lucidity, and unflinching rigor, the acclaimed authors of Who Killed Homer? and Plagues of the Mind unsparingly document the degeneration of a central, if beleaguered, discipline—classics—and reveal the root causes of its decline. Hanson, Heath, and Thornton point to academics themselves—their careerist ambitions, incessant self-promotion, and overspecialized scholarship, among other things—as the progenitors of the crisis, and call for a return to “academic populism,” an approach characterized by accessible, unspecialized writing, selfless commitment to students and teaching, and respect for the legacy of freedom and democracy that the ancients bequeathed to the West.
Author : Folgert Karsdorp
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 35,91 MB
Release : 2021-01-12
Category : Computers
ISBN : 0691172366
A practical guide to data-intensive humanities research using the Python programming language The use of quantitative methods in the humanities and related social sciences has increased considerably in recent years, allowing researchers to discover patterns in a vast range of source materials. Despite this growth, there are few resources addressed to students and scholars who wish to take advantage of these powerful tools. Humanities Data Analysis offers the first intermediate-level guide to quantitative data analysis for humanities students and scholars using the Python programming language. This practical textbook, which assumes a basic knowledge of Python, teaches readers the necessary skills for conducting humanities research in the rapidly developing digital environment. The book begins with an overview of the place of data science in the humanities, and proceeds to cover data carpentry: the essential techniques for gathering, cleaning, representing, and transforming textual and tabular data. Then, drawing from real-world, publicly available data sets that cover a variety of scholarly domains, the book delves into detailed case studies. Focusing on textual data analysis, the authors explore such diverse topics as network analysis, genre theory, onomastics, literacy, author attribution, mapping, stylometry, topic modeling, and time series analysis. Exercises and resources for further reading are provided at the end of each chapter. An ideal resource for humanities students and scholars aiming to take their Python skills to the next level, Humanities Data Analysis illustrates the benefits that quantitative methods can bring to complex research questions. Appropriate for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars with a basic knowledge of Python Applicable to many humanities disciplines, including history, literature, and sociology Offers real-world case studies using publicly available data sets Provides exercises at the end of each chapter for students to test acquired skills Emphasizes visual storytelling via data visualizations
