"Vortex, clouds, and tongue": New problems in the humanities?

Daedalus

Volumn 128, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 241-264

  Sorum, Christina Elliott ^a  

^a UNION COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33745312869     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. Codman Hislop, Eliphalet Nott (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1971), 223.
2. Plato Theatetes 152A1.
3. Plato Republic 600E.
4. Christopher J. Lucas, American Higher Education: A History (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 131.
5. Hislop, Eliphalet Nott, 114-116,
6. and T. G. McFadden, "Introduction," Laws of Union College (Schenectady, N.Y.: Friends of Union College, 1998). Freshmen studied Latin, Greek, and English languages, arithmetic, and elocution; sophomores, geography, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, navigation, and logic; juniors, Kames' elements of criticism, astronomy, higher mathematics, and natural and moral philosophy; and seniors, ancient and modern history, Locke, philosophy, Virgil, Cicero, and Horace.
7. Hislop, Eliphalet Nott, 227.
8. "The Yale Report of 1828," in American Higher Education: A Documentary History, ed. Richard Hofstadter and Wilson Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 2:275-291.
9. Francis Wayland, "Report to the Brown Corporation, 1850," in Hofstadter and Smith, eds., American Higher Education, 478.
10. Charles William Eliot, "Inaugural Address as President of Harvard, 1869," in Hofstadter and Smith, eds., American Higher Education, 601-624.
11. Lucas, American Higher Education, 169.
12. Ann Blankman (English), Tania Magoon (Biology and Classics), Courtney Randall (English), Jeremy Newell (English), Eve Sorum (English), and Eric von Wettberg (Biology).
13. George Levine et al., Speaking for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Occasional Paper, No. 7 (New York: ACLS, 1989), 2;
14. for a longer discussion of the woes of liberal education see Francis Oakley, "Discontents in American Higher Education," in The Politics of Liberal Education, ed. L. Darryl, J. Gless, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992), 267-289.
15. "Third, the College believes that the close relationship between its faculty and students motivates students to learn," mission statement from the Union College Academic Register, 1997-1998.
16. "G. Stanley Hall Describes Gilman's Policies at the Hopkins in the 1880's," in Hofstadter and Smith, eds., American Higher Education, 650.
17. On the necessity of specialization, see Levine et al., Speaking for the Humanities, 5-8.
18. Leonard Cassuto, "Pressures to Publish Fuel the Professionalization of Today's Graduate Students," Chronicle of Higher Education, 27 November 1998, B4-B5.
19. National Research Council, Summary Report 1986: Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1987), 78.
20. According to the Carnegie classification, Liberal Arts I colleges are primarily undergraduate, highly selective institutions that award more than half of their baccalaureate degrees in arts and science fields. Liberal Arts II colleges are less selective and award more than half of their degrees in liberal arts fields.
21. For a similar perspective, see Oakley, "Discontents in American Higher Education," 275.
22. Bruce Kuklick, "The Emergence of the Humanities," in Darryl, Gless, and Smith, eds., Politics of Liberal Education, 201-212.
23. Ernest L. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Princeton, N.J.: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990), 12.
24. Oakley, "Discontents in American Higher Education," 276,
25. and endnote 10; and Levine et al., Speaking for the Humanities, 28-29.
26. John H. D'Arms, "Funding Trends in the Academic Humanities," in What's Happened to the Humanities? ed. Alvin Kernan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 38-41.
27. On the function of research in the university, see Jonathan R. Cole, "Balancing Acts: Dilemmas of Choice Facing Research Universities," Dædalus 122 (4) (Fall 1993): 23-24.
28. Lynn Hunt, "Democratization and Decline? The Consequences of Demographic Change in the Humanities," in Kernan, ed., What's Happened to the Humanities? 17-31, esp. 20-21. She reports average humanities salaries in 1993-1994 as $41,038 in foreign languages, $41,346 in English, $43,489 in philosophy and religion, and $45,337 in history, versus $44,390 in mathematics, $45,000 in physics, and $52,660 in economics.
29. William J. Bennett, To Reclaim a Legacy (Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for the Humanities, 1984), quoting Dean Robert Berdahl of the University of Oregon, 17.
30. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered, Tables A-1, A-5, A-6, A-23, A-30, A-31.
31. Kernan, ed., What's Happened to the Humanities? 247 and Figure 7.
32. Oakley, "Discontents in American Higher Education," 280-281.
33. Arthur Levine and Jeanette S. Cureton, When Hope and Fear Collide (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 115-133.
34. Alexander W. Astin, What Matters in College? (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993), 45.
35. For example, Amherst, Bowdoin, Pomona, Swarthmore, Oberlin, Carleton, Grinnell, Smith, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr as listed in The Princeton Review: The Best 311 Colleges, ed. E. T. Custard et al. (New York: Random House, 1999). The other two most popular majors vary among biology, history, economics, political science, and psychology.
36. Denis Donoghue, "The Practice of Reading," in Kernan, ed., What's Happened to the Humanities? 123;
37. see also Jane Tompkins, A Life in School: What the Teacher Learned (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1996), 133.
38. See Leon Botstein, "Damaged Literacy: Illiteracies and American Democracy," Dædalus 119 (2) (Spring 1990): 55-84.
39. Charles Schroeder, "New Students - New Learning Styles," Change (September/October 1993): 25.
40. Arthur Levine and Jeanette S. Cureton, "Colleagiate Life: An Obituary," Change (May/June 1998): 17;
41. see also Levine and Cureton, When Hope and Fear Collide, 128-130.
42. Levine and Cureton, When Hope and Fear Collide, 128.
43. For example, between 1994 and 1997, Union students in the basic sciences authored or coauthored with faculty forty-eight poster and paper presentations at regional, national, and international conferences, and coauthored with faculty forty-one articles in refereed journals.
44. Levine et al., Speaking for the Humanities, 2.
45. For more specific data see Oakley, "Ignorant Armies and Nighttime Clashes," in Kernan, ed., What's Happened to the Humanities? 71.
46. See Levine et al., Speaking for the Humanities, 19.
47. Oakley, "Ignorant Armies," 65;
48. for an examination of a curriculum strongly influenced by theoretical approaches, see Margery Sabin, "Evolution and Revolution," in Kernan, ed., What's Happened to the Humanities? 84-101.
49. Between 1990 and 1995 enrollments in Spanish rose 13.5 percent (an increase of 72,000 students) and in Chinese 35.8 percent; in Russian they fell 44.6 percent, German 27.8 percent, and French 24.6 percent. "Foreign Language Enrollments in United States Institutions of Higher Education," Modern Language Association, Fall 1995.
50. National Association of Scholars, The Dissolution of General Education: 1914-1993 (Princeton, N.J.: National Association of Scholars, 1996), Figure 1.1, p. 5.
51. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Missions of the College Curriculum (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977).
52. Astin, What Matters in College? 424.
53. Enrollments in Humanities at Union: (Table Presented)
54. Degrees Awarded at Union: (Table Presented) Departments awarding the most degrees at Union in 1969 were Science (35), Political Science (30), History (27), and Electrical Engineering (22) ; in 1978, Political Science (48), Biology (44), Electrical Engineering (53), and Mechanical Engineering (51); in 1987, Political Science (61), Mechanical Engineering (61), Electrical Engineering (76), and Economics (44); in 1998, Psychology (77), Biology (57.5), Political Science (52.5), and Economics (48).