The Humanities

1
The Humanities

• Brendan Rapple LIS413
• Summer 2009 Simmons College

2
What are the Humanities?

• Those branches of knowledge that concern
  themselves with human beings and their culture.
• Distinguished in content and method from the
  physical and biological sciences and, somewhat
  less so, from the social sciences.
• Often placed in juxtaposition to more practical
  studies, which are designed primarily to help us
  make a living.

3
National Foundation on the Arts and the
Humanities Act (1965)

• "The term 'humanities' includes, but is not
  limited to, the study of the following language,
  both modern and classical linguistics
  literature history jurisprudence philosophy
  archaeology comparative religion ethics the
  history, criticism and theory of the arts those
  aspects of social sciences which have humanistic
  content and employ humanistic methods and the
  study and application of the humanities to the
  human environment with particular attention to
  reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and
  history and to the relevance of the humanities to
  the current conditions of national life."

4
Word Humanities May be Misleading

• Many aspects of science deal with humans, with
  human matters.
• Also, people speak of the social sciences as
  having humanistic content and employing
  humanistic methods.
• However, these branches of knowledge and inquiry
  are not counted among the humanities.
• Boundaries of the humanities are often very fuzzy.

5
Humanities and Science

• No single world view in Humanities -- generally
  much more agreement in Science.
• No universally accepted network of truths.
• Humanities much more diverse than Science.

6
No Real Linear Progress in the Humanities

• Science, Medicine etc. clearly manifest progress.
• The same sense of progress does not exist in the
  Humanities.
• We probably do not really know more about
  Shakespeares works -- in the same way that we
  know more about, say, DNA -- than we knew 20
  years ago Ross Atkinson, LRTS, 1995

7
Science is Cumulative

• Literature of science is cumulative in the sense
  that the important ideas and observations of the
  past are included in the current literature
  Urquhart.
• Arguably, if all scientific literature over 30
  years old were destroyed, vast majority would
  still exist in literature produced in recent
  years.
• If you were a scientist trying to discover the
  structure of DNA when Watson and Crick published
  their article on the double helix, there was
  nothing you could do but pick up your marbles and
  go home. The structure had been discovered
  nothing more need be said and scientists moved
  on from there. But if you are a music scholar
  preparing a monograph on Bach and a book on the
  composer comes out, you are of course interested,
  but you do not burn your manuscript. You know
  that no one (including yourself) will ever be
  able to say the last word about Bach and his
  music Garfield.

8
Many Different Layers in Humanities

• It is one thing to understand words in a text, it
  is another to understand them in relation to a
  time and its culture, e.g. Ancient Athenians on
  democracy.
• Ultimately the search leads to the life that
  stood behind the text.

9

• Humanists study VALUE
• Scientists are concerned with
• objective, empirically verifiable data
• experimental results that can be replicated by
  other scientists.
• Typical scientist is primarily interested in most
  recent research literature/materials.
• Typical humanist may be just as interested in far
  older material.

10
Serious Implications for Libraries

• Unlike the sciences, the humanities do not
  withdraw older secondary materials.
• When a critical work is no longer in fashion, it
  becomes valuable as a work to be used in studying
  the history of the field.
• Also the humanities cannot summarize effectively
  earlier publications.

11

• The scientist studies the structure of rainbows,
  not whether they are aesthetically beautiful.
• The psychiatrist studies how a brain functions,
  not whether ones brains activities are morally
  good.
• Scientist studies technological aspects of
  printing, not how printing revolutionized the
  world in so many manifold ways.

12
Humanities Mostly the Work of Individuals

• Though it is changing with computerization,
  humanists tend to work on their own.
• Unlike scientists, they engage in relatively
  little team work.
• Scientist works with colleagues, grad. students
  etc. in a lab.
• Social scientists spend much time with
  co-investigators planning and executing field
  work, surveys, and data analysis.

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• Humanist usually focuses on the less tangible,
  less concrete.
• Humanist relies less on empiricism of the
  laboratory, and more on the views of other
  scholars.
• Humanist seldom deals with measurable,
  quantitative entities.

14
Bibliographic Databases in Humanities

• Not always of great use to Humanities scholar.
• Humanities scholars often stress primary sources
  -- generally covered less well by bibliographic
  tools.
• Some Humanities databases do not include
  abstracts.
• Humanities concepts and terminology less
  standardized than those of science -- less
  susceptible to effective management through a
  controlled vocabulary.
• Science databases often updated more frequently
  -- scientists require more current literature.

15
Humanities and Scholarship

• Studies reveal that 70-90 of citations in
  science are to materials 15 years old or less.
• The Science Citation Index consistently
  demonstrates that about 90 percent of the
  millions of references cited each year were
  published sometime in the past three decades. And
  50 involve papers published in the last ten
  years. As in earlier decades, the vast majority
  of citations are to relatively recent papers
  (Garfield Pudovkin, 2003).
• The figures for humanities citations are 40-45.
• Having retrospective coverage may be more
  important to the humanist than having access to
  current material (Sue Stone, 1982).
• In most sciences 3-10 of citations are to
  books, 90-97 to journal articles.
• In humanities, however, 60-75 are to books.

16
Humanists and Books

• Humanists like books!
• They like being surrounded by them
• They often prefer original texts to copies
• Many need all editions, all drafts, all galley
  proofs
• The old book may be at least as important as the
  current book
• They want texts in the original language

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How Do Humanities Scholars Identify Their
Research Material?

• From references in publications they read.
• From communicating with colleagues.
• From bibliographies.
• From librarians.

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Information Gathering Strategies

• Humanist places paramount importance on the
  library.
• Scientist often more dependent on personal
  collection.
• ______________________________________
• Humanist views browsing, serendipity as
  worthwhile (perhaps a necessity due to relative
  lack of organization of the materials in the
  field).
• Scientist is much more structured.

19
Centrality of the Library

• Laboratory often central to the scientist.
• The field to the social scientist.
• But the library to humanists.
• The creative and performing artist are exceptions
  to the library as center rule of humanists.

20
Still, Much Research Can be Done Remotely

• Though the author is referring primarily to
  social scientists, her point is increasingly
  applicable to at least some humanists
• . . . with the development of digitization and
  the availability of numerous online full-text
  databases, the possibility of doing research at
  home, from an 'armchair,' and perhaps unschooled
  in the rigours of academic research, . . .
  exists. Libraries and archives that required
  researchers to schedule appointments, travel to
  inconvenient locations, and spend endless days
  researching a topic can now, in many cases, be
  accessed from a computer, with source materials
  available online (Sandra Shoiock Roff, 2005)

21
Difficult for Librarians to Satisfy Humanists

• Impossible to collect in so many languages.
• Libraries also greatly feel the pull between
  retrospective collecting and buying/subscribing
  to latest electronic materials.

22
Very Broad Research Vistas of Humanists

• There is an increasing acceptance among
  humanities scholars that any consciously created
  human product, any symbolic artifact, is an
  acceptable object of study. . . .This has led
  to the general position that virtually every
  symbolic creation must be considered equally
  worthy of study. Because any publication or human
  creation can have research potential, humanities
  scholars and the information professionals who
  support them have become increasingly unwilling
  and incapable of coming to terms with what should
  be collected and maintained, and what should not
  (Ross Atkinson, LRTS, 1995).

23
Humanists and Libraries

• Humanities scholars tend to use reference
  librarians relatively little.
• Opposite is true in archives and special (rare
  books, manuscript) libraries.
• Greater spread of individual titles used by
  humanities researchers.
• Almost inevitable that they use libraries other
  than their institutions.
• ILL wont suffice for much primary material --
  accordingly, they have to travel.
• The growing study of the masses and the common
  man creates needs for such materials as comic
  books, TV Guide, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, Wired,
  and Details -- any publication can have research
  potential.

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Other Humanist Characteristics

• Humanities scholars tend to be reluctant to
  delegate bibliographic searching to others --
  perhaps due to a lack of trust.
• Humanists often believe that the search for
  information is important in itself -- journey is
  as important as the destination.

25
Barriers to Access

• Lack of books and journals.
• Sometimes lengthy delay between request and
  receipt of materials (e.g. ILL).
• Loss of material (theft, mutilation etc.).

26
Humanistic Study is Broad

• Retreat from the canon.
• Humanists work is diffuse.
• Hard to focus on a narrow specific area.
• Subjectivism necessarily creeps in.

27
Humanities not as Precise as Science

• Johan Huizinga once spoke of history as a loving
  reconstruction by the moonlight of memory, work
  which can never have the clarity of work done by
  daylight vision.
• Humanists work often opaque.

28
Brief History of Humanities Study

• Interesting that there was no article on the
  Humanities in the famous 11th edition of the
  Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910-11) though there
  was an entry on Humanism (Steven Markus, 2006).
• The first edition of the OED, whose supplement
  appears in 1933, does not include the term
  Humanities at all. Humane, Humanism, humanist,
  humanity, humanitarian these are familiar
  cognates of the word human, but humanities was
  not the term of choice for an area of knowledge
  and set of fields of study until after World War
  II. The more usual (and broader) rubric was
  Liberal Arts, Arts and Sciences, or Arts,
  Letters, and Sciences (Marjorie Perloff, Crisis
  in the Humanities)

29
Brief History of Humanities Study

• Greek Paideia
• Roman Humanitas

30
Paideia

• PAIDEIA is generally distinguished from TECHNE,
  i.e. an education that is narrowly vocational.
• Paideia was composed of
• gymnastics
• grammar
• rhetoric
• music
• mathematics
• geography
• natural history
• philosophy

31
HUMANITAS

• For Cicero, the primary function of education
  was the inculcation of HUMANITAS
• The attributes of the individual whose
  particularly human capacities had been developed
  to their full potential, and who had therefore
  become HUMANISSIMUS.
• These capacities included the gifts of speech and
  reason, but also the social, moral, and aesthetic
  instincts that are peculiar to human beings.
• His ideal of HUMANITAS gives Cicero a right to
  be regarded as the father of classical humanism
  and by extension of HUMANITIES as an educational
  ideal.

32
Middle Ages

• Paideia and Humanitas were adapted to a
  program of basic Christian education.

33
Middle Ages

• Boethius
• Cassiodorus

34
Monastic Education Made Up of . . .

• Quadrivium arithmetic geometry astronomy and
  music theory
• Trivium
• grammar
• logic
• rhetoric

35
Artes Liberales

• Seven Liberal Arts were taught in the
  monasteries, cathedral schools, and, from the
  12th century on, in the universities, they
  constituted the principal university instruction
  until modern times.
• So called liberal (Lat. liber, free) because they
  serve to train the free man and develop her/his
  humanity they were intended to liberate man.
• In contrast with the artes illiberales, which are
  pursued for economic purposes.

36
Renaissance

• Umanisti that is, professors or students of
  classical literature.
• The word umanisti derives from the studia
  humanitatis, a course of classical studies that,
  in the early 15th century, consisted of grammar,
  poetry, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy.

37
Renaissance Humanitas

• Ideal of Humanism
• Qualities associated with the modern word
  humanity--understanding, benevolence, compassion,
  mercy.
• But also such more active characteristics as
  fortitude, judgment, prudence, eloquence, and
  even love of honor.
• Possessor of humanitas not just a sedentary
  philosopher or man of letters but also a
  participant in active life.
• Renaissance Humanitas called for a fine balance
  of action and contemplation.

38
Renaissance

• The wellspring of humanitas was classical
  literature.
• For Renaissance humanists, there was nothing
  dated or outworn about the writings of Plato,
  Cicero, or Livy.
• Recovering the classics was to humanism
  tantamount to recovering reality.
• The humanists were convinced that the study of
  literature (notably of the classics and their
  enormous source of wisdom and moral reflection)
  would encourage humane and civilized behavior.

39
Renaissance

• An important distinction was that the Humanities
  were seen as opposite to Divinity.
• Humanists struggled against the dominance of
  dialectics and theologians who were entangled in
  abstruse speculations.
• Dissatisfied with Scholasticism.
• The Middle Ages were truly over.

40

• In the sixteenth century this line of thought was
  continued (by Erasmus and Montaigne for example).

41
17th Century

• The belief that the classics, the mainspring of
  Humanities, are an inexhaustible source of
  practical knowledge was increasingly subject to
  doubt.
• Francis Bacon and Science
• Mistrusted the humanist tool par excellence, the
  word.
• Advocated a more systematic and methodical way of
  thinking than the humanistic exegetists were used
  to.
• Was a great advocate of science.

42
Royal Society (1662)

• "The Business and Design of the Royal Society
  is to improve the knowledge of naturall things,
  and all usefull Arts, Manufactures, Mechanik
  practices, Engynes and Innovations by Experiments
  not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics,
  Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetorick or
  Logick."

43
Humanities versus Empiricism/Science

• Essentially there was disagreement not only on
  which was the best method to gather true
  knowledge, but also on which approach resulted in
  the most useful knowledge to guide human action.
• To this day these problems play a role in the
  discussion on the legitimacy of the HUMANITIES.

44
18th C.

• Humanities and the natural sciences as
  complementary rather than contradictory
  disciplines.

45
19th C.

• The natural sciences gained momentum and
  prestige.
• Materialistic, utilitarian and biological views
  of reality gained ground under the influence of
  the natural sciences (and philosophical
  reflections on them).

46
The Forming of Nations

• Now, the HUMANITIES constituted a great vehicle
  for the enthusiastic study and preservation of
  national cultures.
• This implied a change of course with respect to
  the classical HUMANITIES, which had focused on
  the universally human.

47
20th and 21st Centuries

• The influence of leveling on Humanities
• The increasing numbers in education
• The growing influence of mass culture
  (emancipation)
• Cultural pluralism
• Change from a culture based primarily on texts to
  a culture based on images.
• Role of Internet

48
Classification of Disciplines

• A long history
• Many classification schemes
• Question of a hierarchy of disciplines

49
Which are the Humanities?

• A very practical problem for librarians and
  educators
• University Disciplines/Departments
• Often a useful way to define disciplines.
• Each university has its own characteristic
  departmental organization, and consequent
  categorization of humanities.
• More traditional, conservative colleges often
  dont teach newer humanities subjects.

50
Check a Librarys Current Periodical Stacks

• A perusal of the current periodical stacks of a
  large research library also points to a host of
  innovative and esoteric research areas.

51
Disciplinary Domain of the Humanities

• English and American Studies
• Middle Eastern and African Studies
• East and South Asian Studies
• European Studies
• Cultural Studies
• Linguistics
• Other Languages and Literatures
• Philosophy
• History and Philosophy of Science
• History of Ideas

• Classics and Ancient History
• Archeology
• History of Art, Architecture, Design
• Law
• Theology and Religious Studies
• Communication and Media Studies
• Music and History of Music
• Film Studies
• Drama and Theatre Studies
• Studies of other Performing Arts

52
Disciplinary versus Anti-disciplinary

• Some argue for distinct boundaries between
  subjects.
• Others want to break boundaries between subjects.
• Disciplinarians argue that keeping boundaries
  between fields of study maintains traditional
  standards and scholarly excellence.
  Anti-disciplinarians, on the other hand, believe
  in the creative influence of disciplinary
  cross-fertilization and see the salvation of
  endangered humanities in interdisciplinary
  collaboration The Role and Status of the
  Humanities at AAU Universities.

53
Boundaries of Disciplines

• Importance of the scholarship of integration,
  i.e. making connections across disciplines and
  placing specialties in broader contexts.
• Importance of doing research at the boundaries
  where fields converge.

54
Growth in Interdisciplinarity

• David Marshall asks
• Imagine that one summer after graduation
  ceremonies, we disbanded all of our academic
  departments in the humanities and told the
  faculty to come back in the fall organized into
  bureaucratic and academic configurations of
  their choice. . . . What would happen?
  (Marshall, Liberal Education, 2007)
• Marshall believes that far more inter- and
  cross-disciplinary configurations would be created

55
Arts and Humanities VERSUS

• Social Behavioral Sciences

56

• Generally differ in methodology social and
  behavioral sciences tend to use methods that are
  borrowed from the natural sciences.
• Humanities disciplines generally have a longer
  history.

57
Traffic/Borrowing

• The main direction of information flow is from
  Social Sciences to the Humanities.
• Social Sciences appear to have little inclination
  to import ideas from the Humanities.

58
Major Problem for Libraries

• Contemporary Information Explosion
• Specialization of Knowledge
• In short, the growth of scholarship means that
  universities and their libraries cannot maintain
  a coverage of all subject areas.

59
Emergence of New (and relatively new) Disciplines

• For Example
• Women's studies
• Gay studies
• Environmental studies
• Multicultural studies
• Different approaches to literary studies, e.g.
  Critical Theory
• Ethnic Studies
• Cultural Studies
• Film Media Studies
• Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies
• American Studies and other area studies (e.g.
  Irish Studies)
• Medical Humanities

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Seems to be Great Decline in

• Synthesis of knowledge.
• General understanding of knowledge.

61

• "The knowledge explosion left us ignorant of
  vast fields of knowledge that every educated man
  or woman ought to have known"
• Wayne C. Booth

62
New Models of Scholarly Communication

• For the Humanities scholar just as much as for
  the Scientist

63
Nature of Scholarly Research will also Change
64
The Humanities Curriculum Today

• Certainly changed since the 1960s
• Inclusion of interdepartmental and
  interdisciplinary programs
• Globalization of the curriculum
• Proliferation of course offerings pertaining to
• minority populations
• ethnic groups
• women and gender-related issues.

65
What Skills (?) to be Learned By Studying the
Humanities?

• Critical and Creative thinking are not peculiar
  to the study of the humanities. The natural and
  social sciences and the professional disciplines
  also stress the development of analytical
  abilities, valid reasoning, good oral and written
  communication, and skills of inquiry generally.
  In manifesting these skills themselves, humanists
  have to be wary of the desperate contention that
  they develop or possess them in pre-eminent
  degree. So, too, for the suggestion that the
  intellectual skills refined in the humanities
  represent the core of higher education. The
  evidence for such propositions is elusive, for
  which reason a serious effect of the contention
  may be to isolate the humanities from the rest of
  the academy.
• Evan Simpson. What are the Humanities (talk at
  Memorial Univ., 26 Oct. 1999).

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Are Numbers Studying Humanities Declining?

• The culture wars have been over a battlefield
  that has been shrinking for reasons that have
  little to do with the ways of teaching American
  history or literature since the 1960s and a lot
  to do with the perceived utility of a college
  education. The number of degrees in the liberal
  arts has been declining for a century. The
  biggest undergraduate major is business, which
  awards 20 percent of all bachelor's degrees.
  Education gives out 10 percent. The only liberal
  arts that are growing are psychology and the
  biological sciences.
• Catharine R. Stimpson. Daedalus, Summer 2002 v131
  i3 pp. 36 -.

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Are Numbers Studying Humanities Declining?

• The number of degrees awarded is another
  indicator of the health of the humanities. Again,
  because statistics must be drawn from a number of
  sources, the information often conflicts or is
  hard to reconcile. In general, these indicators
  suggest that, with the exception of English,
  humanities at the bachelor and doctoral levels is
  holding steady or thriving. Unfortunately, the
  same is not true at the masters level.The
  Department of Education's NCES, for example,
  collects data on degrees awarded as part of the
  IPEDS Completions Survey. . . .Charts based on
  these data show that while the percentage of
  masters degrees awarded in the humanities has
  steadily dropped since the early 1990s, the
  percentage of doctorates and bachelors degrees
  in the humanities has actually risen in recent
  years.
• The Role and Status of the Humanities at AAU
  Universities (2004)

68
Are Numbers Studying Humanities Declining?

• But I want to suggest that the failure to
  pursue BAs and PhDs in the humanities also
  comes from within the humanities humanities
  faculty have faltered when it comes to explaining
  why their fields matter, especially to students
  from families in which the parents did not go to
  college. Lynn Hunt. Tradition Confronts Change
  The Place of the Humanities in the University
  (1998)

69
Are Numbers Studying Humanities Declining?

• More largely, not only do the humanities seem
  far less surely the center of a liberal arts
  education, but the liberal arts also seem less
  surely the center of education generally, which
  has grown remarkably careerist.
• Robert Weisbuch, President, Woodrow Wilson
  National Fellowship Foundation (1998)