ERIC Number: EJ790199
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2002
Pages: 49
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0021-8510
EISSN: N/A
Symposium: A Beginning in the Humanities
Brooks, Peter; Fry, Paul H.; Carnochan, W. B.; Culler, Jonathan; Lerer, Seth; Marshall, Donald G.; Johnson, Barbara; Steiner, Wendy; Haack, Susan; Nussbaum, Martha C.
Journal of Aesthetic Education, v36 n3 p1-49 Fall 2002
2001 marked Yale's 300th birthday. It seemed an opportunity for reflection on the evolution of the institution, and particularly on the vicissitudes of the humanities over those three centuries. This article presents essays which represent a selection from the symposium, "Beginning With the Humanities," held at the Whitney Humanities Center on March 30-31, 2001. "Beginning With the Humanities" because the meagre institution that began its existence in 1701 was virtually nothing but humanities, with a narrow vision and, of course, a theological optics. The symposium thus addressed itself to the question of the place the humanities now can hold in the university. This meant inevitably that it needed to be about the humanities "and" the relations of the humanities to the other fields that have since 1701 claimed a place in the university, and indeed most often the larger place. The symposium was conceived as a set of questions about how Yale, and the American university more generally, got from there to here, from then to now, and about the kinds of dialogues with other fields of inquiry that the humanities can and must pursue to maintain their critical pertinence. It started from local history--consideration of some defining moments in Yale's history, including the Enlightenment presidency of Ezra Stiles; the famous or infamous 1828 Yale Faculty Report on the Curriculum; and the transformative years of Kingman Brewster's presidency in the 1960s and 1970s; and moved outward. Then it addressed "The Interpretive Turn," Yale's long, contentious, and influential traditions in philology and criticism. The symposium went on to discuss "Darkness and Truth: Enlightenment and Inequality in the Social Sciences and History," "Epistemology and Certainty in the Sciences and the Humanities," and finally "The Public Face of the Humanities." (Contains 32 notes.)
Descriptors: Local History, Social Sciences, Epistemology, Humanities, Conferences (Gatherings), Essays, Higher Education, Colleges
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A