This is all completely true, unfortunately. There’s no solution but we are going to have to find ways to maintain some semblance of a culture notwithstanding. No clue what this will look like. What’s your area of research?
I think we'll maintain a culture that is basically middlebrow--which I mean not as an epithet, but to say that the humanities will essentially be for smart hobbyists with day jobs and the kinds of writers those hobbyists like to read. I hope all of the humanities turn out kind of like Civil War history is today: a broad base of readers and consumers, a good number of popular books that are by and large quite good, and a few excellent scholars at tony universities who plumb the archives. We'll see, though.
And, nice to meet you; I've enjoyed reading some of your work--I study 19th century American literature, especially American realism and activist novels!
An interesting article. I've never considered the decline of humanities from a population standpoint. As an English major (and having once considered going to graduate school), I've thought a lot about why the humanities is in free-fall. Regardless of the many reasons, the fact is that nothing can be done to stop it. But why should there be? While it's true that we now live in a more superficial culture, that the majority of people are too addicted to scrolling (and much more) to engage deeply, or at all, with literature, it doesn't mean literature will die. It just means the literary landscape changing. In fact, I think its movement out of academia might even open it more to the public (I admit, this is quite an ambitious hope, at least in the short-run). A humanities degree is overpriced. That's just a fact. You can get everything you get out of four years studying literature at a university in a year and a half of evenings at the library. That doesn't mean reading and writing are useless; it just means the job market has changed (and I think, in fact, that engaging in literature for an end--as in, to get a degree, to get a job, to make money, etc.--undermines its purpose).
This is all completely true, unfortunately. There’s no solution but we are going to have to find ways to maintain some semblance of a culture notwithstanding. No clue what this will look like. What’s your area of research?
I think we'll maintain a culture that is basically middlebrow--which I mean not as an epithet, but to say that the humanities will essentially be for smart hobbyists with day jobs and the kinds of writers those hobbyists like to read. I hope all of the humanities turn out kind of like Civil War history is today: a broad base of readers and consumers, a good number of popular books that are by and large quite good, and a few excellent scholars at tony universities who plumb the archives. We'll see, though.
And, nice to meet you; I've enjoyed reading some of your work--I study 19th century American literature, especially American realism and activist novels!
An interesting article. I've never considered the decline of humanities from a population standpoint. As an English major (and having once considered going to graduate school), I've thought a lot about why the humanities is in free-fall. Regardless of the many reasons, the fact is that nothing can be done to stop it. But why should there be? While it's true that we now live in a more superficial culture, that the majority of people are too addicted to scrolling (and much more) to engage deeply, or at all, with literature, it doesn't mean literature will die. It just means the literary landscape changing. In fact, I think its movement out of academia might even open it more to the public (I admit, this is quite an ambitious hope, at least in the short-run). A humanities degree is overpriced. That's just a fact. You can get everything you get out of four years studying literature at a university in a year and a half of evenings at the library. That doesn't mean reading and writing are useless; it just means the job market has changed (and I think, in fact, that engaging in literature for an end--as in, to get a degree, to get a job, to make money, etc.--undermines its purpose).