The Humanities

What Future

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20249195
AutoresDeborah Pike (The University of Notre Dame Australia, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume12
Fascículo4
Páginas85
Data de publicação2023-08-17
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHumanities (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787
EditoraMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/h12040085
OpenAlexW4385948882
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas32

Higher education in Australia is in a period of crisis and transition. While COVID-related events and their impacts have made it difficult for all areas of university academic endeavour, among the hardest hit have been humanities. Drawing on live interviews with professors in a range of humanities disciplines, the paper elucidates various elements of the crisis, which includes a summary of the impacts of the last three decades’ rise in neoliberalist imperatives within the university sector. The paper then argues that a robust defence of the humanities needs to be made and uses literary studies as its focus. Today, we are more in need of the humanities than ever. But this is a complex undertaking as research in higher education and live interviews reveal; the dictates of measurement, accountability, and questions of value within the humanities remain vexed; and while the aims and requirements of humanities studies may be at odds with neoliberalist demands and corporatisation, the humanities themselves may also be contributing to their own demise. Therefore, I offer future directions: I argue for the urgent need for the humanities to reinvigorate their ethical and critical functions, the need to demonstrate the connections between the humanities and wellbeing, the imperative to slow down and to eradicate the over-casualisation of academia, and the necessity for the humanities to articulate more clearly their connections with employment outcomes for a dynamic and evolving future

Accountability · Art · Demise · Digital humanities · Higher education · Humanities · Political science · Sociology · Empathy and Medical Education · Humor Studies and Applications · Law · Leadership, Courage, and Heroism Studies