Manifesto for the humanities : transforming doctoral education in good enough times / Sidonie Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, Sidonie

Contributor:

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Doctor of philosophy degree.

Universities and colleges--Graduate work.

Universities and colleges.

Humanities--Study and teaching.

Humanities.

Educational change.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2016.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

After a remarkable career in higher education that has seen her serve as the Chair of the University of Michigan English Department, the Director of the Michigan institute for the Humanities, and the President of the Modern Language Association, Sidonie Smith offers Manifesto for the Humanities as a reflective contribution to the current academic conversation over the place of the humanities in the 21st century. Her focus, as the subtitle indicates, is on doctoral education and opportunities she sees for its reform. "The 'Grand Challenge' confronting academic humanists," Smith avers, "is the imperative of sustaining passionate conviction about the value of studying the humanities in a climate of funding scarcity, corporatization, and neoliberal market economics. Responsibility for that sustainability-in the academy, in the nation, and around the globe-lies in part with humanities doctoral students, now or soon-to-be entering careers, who are driven by the desire to continue conversations, journeys, and discoveries, whether they take place in archives, in lines of poetry, in the logic of the assertion, or in the dirt of the dig. These doctoral students are preparing to play their role as agents of change for a sustainable future." Grounded in research and a thorough background study of factors contributing to current "crises" in the humanities, Smith's project advocates for a broadening or "re-opening" of some of the more hermetic aspects of ultra-specialization, towards further interdisciplinary bridge-building and towards a more robust, engaged public humanities. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I The Times Are Good Enough 5

Realities on the Ground 7

What Is to Be Done? 16

Part II The Everyday Life of the Humanities Now 33

The Distributed University 35

Knowledge Environments 43

The New Media and Modes of Scholarly Communication 55

Going Open 67

Learning, Pedagogy, and Curricular Environments; or, How We Teach Now 85

The Possibly Posthuman Humanities Scholar 103

Manifesto for a Sustainable Humanities 108

Part III Toward a 21st-century Doctoral Education 111

A Time of Troubles, a Time of Opportunity 113

Breathing Life into the Dissertation 129

Responding to Counterarguments 144

A 21st-century Doctoral Education 155

The Upside of Change 165.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472073047

9780472053049

9780472121717

Publisher Number:

10.3998/dcbooks.13607059.0001.001

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.