This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "The Challenges of the Humanities, Past, Present, and Future - Volume 1" that was published in Humanities

The humanities have been an integral part of humanitys cultural structure for centuries. In this book, a number of leading scholars reflect on the past, present and offer their perspectives for the future of the humanities. The first chapter (written by Jennifer Laubenthal, Jonathan Helmick and Kathleen Melago) describes the vitality of music for humanistic study. Next, Kevin Donnelly provides his perspectives and research of the humanities as they pertain to Australian history. Professor Donald Elder then extols the humanities from a historical perspective, investigating key crucial events that have taken place in America. Literacy and literacy instruction in the past, present and future are detailed by Professors Thompson and Coffey, while scholar Paul Horton examines the plight of the humanities in the vise of K-20 corporate education reform. Emerging technologies in humanities education is critically examined by Arjun Sabharwal while Gerald Cupchik explores the humanities, emotions and aesthetics in a singular fashion. The realms of pedagogy and knowledge are explored by Will Fitzhugh and Michael F. Shaughnessy, while Greg Eft paints a panorama of concerning the definition of beauty as it pertains to the humanities. Geni Flores then follows in a chapter that promotes and accentuates the importance of multiculturalism and diversity as instruments of social justice. Josh McVey interprets Scripture and its origins within the humanities while Anna Beck explores historical American theatre and provides a glimpse of this realm through various windows. Opal Greer sheds light on what we may be able to discern from the humanities past and envisions the realm of their future in universities and academia. Professor Elder contributes a second time to this manuscript, boldly going where not historian has gone before and examining the relevance of space history to this subject matter. Bringing the book to a close, Herbert London offers his perspective on the future of the humanities. Scholars, researchers, critics, historians, art lovers, and musicians as well as many involved in education will relish and enjoy this rich, robust exploration of the humanities and its relation to the past, present and future.

Humanists, scientists, and artists collaborate to address the disjunctive temporalities of ecological crisis In 2016, Antarctica’s Totten Glacier, formed some 34 million years ago, detached from its bedrock, melted from the bottom by warming ocean waters. For the editors of Timescales, this event captures the disjunctive temporalities of our era’s—the Anthropocene’s—ecological crises: the rapid and accelerating degradation of our planet’s life-supporting environment established slowly over millennia. They contend that, to represent and respond to these crises (i.e., climate change, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, species extinction, and biodiversity loss) requires reframing time itself, making more visible the relationship between past, present, and future, and between a human life span and the planet’s. Timescales’ collection of lively and thought-provoking essays puts oceanographers, geophysicists, geologists, and anthropologists into conversation with literary scholars, art historians, and archaeologists. Together forging new intellectual spaces, they explore the relationship between geological deep time and historical particularity, between ecological crises and cultural expression, between environmental policy and social constructions, between restoration ecology and future imaginaries, and between constructive pessimism and radical (and actionable) hope. Interspersed among these essays are three complementary “etudes,” in which artists describe experimental works that explore the various timescales of ecological crisis. Contributors: Jason Bell, Harvard Law School; Iemanjá Brown, College of Wooster; Beatriz Cortez, California State U, Northridge; Wai Chee Dimock, Yale U; Jane E. Dmochowski, U of Pennsylvania; David A. D. Evans, Yale U; Kate Farquhar; Marcia Ferguson, U of Pennsylvania; Ömür Harmanşah, U of Illinois at Chicago; Troy Herion; Mimi Lien; Mary Mattingly; Paul Mitchell, U of Pennsylvania; Frank Pavia, California Institute of Technology; Dan Rothenberg; Jennifer E. Telesca, Pratt Institute; Charles M. Tung, Seattle U.

Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval European Literature aims to examine and unearth the critical investigations of toleration and tolerance presented in literary texts of the Middle Ages. In contrast to previous approaches, this volume identifies new methods of interpreting conventional classifications of toleration and tolerance through the emergence of multi-level voices in literary, religious, and philosophical discourses of authorities in medieval literature. Accordingly, this volume identifies two separate definitions of toleration and tolerance, the former as a representative of a majority group accepts a member of the minority group but still holds firmly to the believe that s/he is right and the other entirely wrong, and tolerance meaning that all faiths, convictions, and ideologies are treated equally, and the majority speaker is ready to accept that potentially his/her position is wrong. Applying these distinct differences in the critical investigation of interaction and representation in context, this book offers new insight into the tolerant attitudes portrayed in medieval literature of which regularly appealed, influenced and shaped popular opinions of the period.

This book locates the humanities in six general fields of study: religion and philosophy, art and music, and literature and history. It offers suggestions for interdisciplinary work around topics such as punishment, and death and dying.

Jan Huizinga and Roger Caillois have already taught us to realize how important games and play have been for pre-modern civilization. Recent research has begun to acknowledge the fundamental importance of these aspects in cultural, religious, philosophical, and literary terms. This volume expands on the traditional approach still very much focused on the materiality of game (toys, cards, dice, falcons, dolls, etc.) and acknowledges that game constituted also a form of coming to terms with human existence in an unstable and volatile world determined by universal randomness and fortune. Whether considering blessings or horse fighting, falconry or card games, playing with dice or dolls, we can gain a much deeper understanding of medieval and early modern society when we consider how people pursued pleasure and how they structured their leisure time. The contributions examine a wide gamut of approaches to pleasure, considering health issues, eroticism, tournaments, playing music, reading and listening, drinking alcohol, gambling and throwing dice. This large issue was also relevant, of course, in non-Christian societies, and constitutes a critical concern both for the past and the present because we are all homines ludentes.

The notions of other peoples, cultures, and natural conditions have always been determined by the epistemology of imagination and fantasy, providing much freedom and creativity, and yet have also created much fear, anxiety, and horror. In this regard, the pre-modern world demonstrates striking parallels with our own insofar as the projections of alterity might be different by degrees, but they are fundamentally the same by content. Dreams, illusions, projections, concepts, hopes, utopias/dystopias, desires, and emotional attachments are as specific and impactful as the physical environment. This volume thus sheds important light on the various lenses used by people in the Middle Ages and the early modern age as to how they came to terms with their perceptions, images, and notions. Previous scholarship focused heavily on the history of mentality and history of emotions, whereas here the history of pre-modern imagination, and fantasy assumes center position. Imaginary things are taken seriously because medieval and early modern writers and artists clearly reveal their great significance in their works and their daily lives. This approach facilitates a new deep-structure analysis of pre-modern culture.