Thursday, January 06, 2005
BW has a link today to an article in the chronicle of higher education about the recent meeting of the modern language association. the article deals with discussion of the increasing disconnect between the discourse of language and literature scholarship in the humanities and the general public (yes, i'm trying to use as many words beginning with dis- as possible). there seems to be some healthy soul-searching occurring, and a push 'to reconnect teaching with scholarship'. as john david guillory pointed out,
in addition,
to my mind, this is good news indeed. outgoing MLA president robert scholes stated the position of the gathering consensus well:
"Our primary audience is our students," he insisted, suggesting that a larger public audience would follow a renewal of commitment to the classroom.
in addition,
Kwame Anthony Appiah, a professor of philosophy at Princeton University, deplored the humanities' inability to give a "publicly intelligible account of what we are doing." If the greater public was uninterested in the humanities, he argued, "it is our fault, not their fault."
to my mind, this is good news indeed. outgoing MLA president robert scholes stated the position of the gathering consensus well:
"I can't say just how long this will take," he said. "But I do believe that this is happening. There is more interest in these things ... grammar, rhetoric, and also logic. ... There needs to be an overall recognition that what you say has to be reasonable. That it has to be answerable to certain disciplinary considerations. Within this discipline, you can only say x if y and z are in fact reasonable suppositions."
