Arts of living : reinventing the humanities for the twenty-first century / Kurt Spellmeyer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Spellmeyer, Kurt.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Humanities--Study and teaching (Higher)--United States.

Humanities.

Humanities--Study and teaching (Higher).

History.

Humanities--Political aspects.

Learning and scholarship.

United States.

Humanities--Philosophy.

Learning and scholarship--United States--History.

Humanities--Political aspects--United States.

Humanities--United States--History.

Physical Description:

vii, 312 pages ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Reinventing the humanities for the twenty-first century

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2003]

Summary:

Arts of Living presents a social history of the humanities and a proposal for the future that places creativity at the heart of higher education. Engaging with the debate launched by Allan Bloom, Harold Bloom, Bill Readings, John Guillory, and others, Kurt Spellmeyer argues that higher education needs to abandon the "culture wars" if it hopes to address the major crises of the century: globalization, the degradation of the environment, the widening chasm between rich and poor, and the clash of cultures.

Contents:

1 Taking the Humanities Out of the Box 3

2 Democracy Sets in the West: From Able Citizens to Ignorant Masses 27

3 The Great Divide: The Professions Against Civil Society 49

4 The Trouble with English: The Rise of the Professional Humanities and Their Abandonment of Civil Society 73

5 The Poverty of Progress: James Agee, Lionel Trilling, and the Alienation of Knowledge 99

6 The Wages of Theory: Isolation and Knowledge in the Humanities 121

7 World without End: Criticism or Creation in the Humanities? 145

8 Specialists with Spirit: The Humanities

Outside the University 175

9 "Art Serves Love": The Arts As a Paradigm for the Humanities 199

10 Travels to the Heart of the Forest: Dilettantes and Professionals in the Twentieth Century 221

Postscript: Could Teaching, of All Things, Prove to Be Our Salvation? 241.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-296) and index.

ISBN:

0791456471

079145648X

OCLC:

50898777