The Chronicle: Colloquy: The question

THE QUESTION

In an essay in this week's Chronicle, Lisa Ruddick, an associate professor of English at the University of Chicago, explores the way many people are finding humanities scholarship lacking in this time of crisis. Ms. Ruddick quotes a graduate student who asks, "If you're not getting at anything that sustains people, what's the point?" Ms. Ruddick notes that qualms about the state of humanities scholarship predated September 11, but she argues that the terrorist attacks have made the concerns more urgent. She then discusses steps that might make scholarship more meaningful. "A first step in rethinking what we are about as a profession may be to stop focusing on outsmarting one another and to find ways to foster the more intuitive and receptive dimensions of our communal and intellectual lives." Can scholarship in the humanities, as practiced today, sustain people in a time of crisis? What changes are needed in humanities scholarship to make it more valuable?

For further information, see this background article:

The Near Enemy of the Humanities Is Professionalism (11/23/2001)

: 6 RESPONSES (New 2/11)

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