Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 480.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 09:18:50 +0000
From: Willard McCarty <w.mccarty@btinternet.com>
Subject: disciplinarity and the future of the academy
Anyone interested in how humanities computing fits into the academy, or for
other reasons in the disciplines and their interrelations, will likely want
to read ACLS Occasional Paper 49, Louis Menand's "The Marketplace of
Ideas", published online at <http://www.acls.org/op49.htm>. As those
Humanists who have been here awhile have likely heard me say before, the
ACLS series consistently publishes among the most intellectually
stimulating and rewarding essays I know of. A mainstay is the Charles Homer
Haskins lecture, "A Life of Learning", given each year by a senior American
scholar. The 2001 lecture is by Helen Vendler
<http://www.acls.org/op50.htm> -- a wonderful piece that I recommend to
you, though it has nothing to do with computing.
Let me quote from the Introduction to Menand's paper (found only in the
printed version):
"In this provocative paper, Louis Menand seeks to address what are the
'philosophical roots' of the humanities disciplines and how--or if--those
disciplines now connect to those historic roots. The complex interplay of
disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and what Menand calls
'postdisciplinarity' is certainly one of the most striking features of
humanistic scholarship today.... Departments and schools must accommodate
dramatic intellectual change, but those changes increasingly are incubated
in centers, programs, and diverse sites that do not easily fit disciplinary
models. Professor Menand sees in these trends the promise of an
intellectually and socially healthy future, but he also notes the many
snares on the road to realisation of that hope."
Yours,
W
Dr Willard McCarty, Senior Lecturer,
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London,
Strand, London WC2R 2LS, U.K.,
+44 (0)20 7848-2784, ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/,
willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk, w.mccarty@btinternet.com
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