The long-term shift in undergraduate enrollment away from traditional humanities disciplines toward vocationally oriented majors poses a unique set of challenges for honors. While some have responded by emphasizing humanities' centrality to honors education, this essay argues the imperative that honors practitioners and administrators improve…

Neither the historical antecedents of honors education in the Oxford tutorial model nor Aydelotte's implementation of honors at Swarthmore College in 1922 involves a privileging of the humanities within honors education. The signature characteristics of honors education and pedagogies are discipline-neutral. Though the historical and institutional…

In response to the issue of why and how the humanities--and more broadly the liberal arts and sciences--have historically dominated honors education and disregarded preprofessional fields, the author finds that the crux of the problem is not the nature or worth of the disciplines involved or why this or that subject area is de facto included or…

A recent (2020) report by the Modern Language Association addresses the ethical treatment of graduate students in the humanities, and the author considers this in the context of honors students and faculty. Lamenting missed opportunities for in-person group presentations, student-led Socratic circles, and final individual presentations during the…

Using survey data collected from 269 participants in the fall of 2016 and the spring of 2017, this study examines whether any changes might have occurred within the last 20 years regarding the disciplinary affiliation of honors administrators. Additionally, we explored current assessment practices of honors administrators and possible associations…

Honors educators frequently engage in conversations about the decline of interest in and funding for the liberal arts and humanities. Larry Andrews's essay "The Humanities are Dead! Long Live the Humanities!" is one of several that contributes to a metanarrative about the liberal arts and humanities, playing out along the following…

Annmarie Guzy opens this article by saying that, as a professor of composition and technical communication, she has found "dipping into other fields" an integral part of her job. In a traditional English department, what she does is considered service teaching, providing a service to other departments and colleges rather than teaching…

This article is delivered to the reader in 13 stanzas, and is a modest takeoff of Wallace Stevens' poem, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at A Blackbird." The poem may be better known for the art and arguments created in its wake than for the original. In "Blackbird," Stevens displays a blackbird in a tree, then cuts language to its…

Not every student has done honors work in the humanities, but all students experience research at a human level that necessarily recalls the work of the humanities. This article describes how Joe Kraus, a professor of literature at the University of Scranton, was inspired to see applied humanities in stories of human experiences, which helped him…

In a cultural environment that maintains that post-secondary education ought to produce job ready graduates, the importance of the liberal arts and the competencies they teach, along with the questions they engage, often comes up for debate. In such a culture, honors may appear frivolous, elitist, and rear-guard. Angela Marie Salas defends both…

The academic disciplines and values of the humanities in western cultures run from the Greek trivium--grammar, logic, rhetoric--to modern-day studies in history, philosophy, religious studies, literature, languages, art history, and some interdisciplinary studies. What is their future, and what is their relationship to honors education? Are the…

This article provides a student's viewpoint in response to Larry Andrews' article, "The Humanities Are Dead! Long Live the Humanities!," which addresses and solidifies the notion that, at least from the standpoint of academicians, the humanities are alive and well. The author believes that a broader base of learning, an increased…

In a world that no longer privileges thinking, Andrew Martino writes here that we might need to consider what we are asking of our students--and why--when we ask them to think. This article presents a declaration of how Martino thinks honors education can serve as a resistant force against the increasing encroachment of a wholly utilitarian…

In February of 1967, newly elected Governor Ronald Reagan delivered a speech about California's austere budget in which he chided the "intellectual luxury" of higher education as something that could lead to "economic ruin" if unchecked. "Taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing intellectual curiosity," Gov. Reagan decreed.…

The emphasis on STEM education should not be interpreted as an omen of the death of humanities; art, literature, history, and philosophy can inform and enlighten STEM studies if the walls of academic silos are broken down and taught in combination. Where the physical universe collides with the fanciful and flawed human experience of life, there is…