My students and I are writing just now about college (a theme we often write about), and a question that has been pursuing me as of late is, What difference might the “humanities” make in a college education in the U.S. in the 21st century (we’ve been reading, among other things, Mark Edmundson’s diatribe about liberal education). A narrower version of this question goes like this: What is it that the humanities contribute to a Cascadia education? I suppose my interest is driven in part by the demands of accreditation and a fear of being irrelevant, but I think the interest runs deeper. Between 1981 and 1994, I worked my way to three degrees in English. I studied the humanities because I loved the courses and (for the most part) the people who taught them. Despite the fact that I was moved enough by literature and drama, music and architecture to forego more lucrative and, much of the time, comprehensible interests, I have never written for myself an apology. Oh, I offer to my students various arguments about the value of the courses we are beginning; those arguments may even be valid and compelling. But I have never integrated such an argument to the point that I might offer it to the parents of one of my students (or to group of my students who are themselves parents).

So here goes. I’ll start from the boilerplate that describes the humanities and associated learning outcomes:


Languages, literature, the arts and philosophy are essential cultural expressions of being human. Underlying these subjects are ideas such as aesthetics, ethics, symbolism and creativity that vary across times and cultures. Through the humanities, learners participate in others’ subjective experience of reality and convey their own.

Learn: Learners will gain knowledge of the core content of at least two humanities disciplines and of methods of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Think: Learners will analyze and evaluate humanities content, drawing conclusions about the form and impact of human artifacts.

Communicate: Learners will discover and use a creative process to communicate understandings of human experience through visual, musical, dramatic, oral, or written products.

Interact: Learners will investigate the context and language of the human experience to examine and explore their everyday worlds and to expand their experience and under- standing of other cultures and times.

I have to admit that I like the last sentence of our summary: “learners participate in others’ subjective experience of reality and convey their own.” We are suggesting that one studies the humanities to practice listening to the way that others have represented experience and to speak richly about those representations in ways that are honest to her experience.

So what would I watch, say, a lit student doing in order to know where they are in achieving such an outcome? I would want to see her talk about literary texts as historical forms but as a person who is consuming those texts (and not some disembodied expert). I would also want to see her respond to another person talking about a literary artifact. It might be that just the latter would do. If a learner considered a response to a text and explained how that other presented an artifact as an aesthetic form and how that other’s response builds for her a more complete understanding. This “talk” could be delivered in a variety of media (from a book club performance to a conference talk to a website to a podcast to a conventional essay. This “talk” might be aimed at a variety of identified audiences and assessed for its effectiveness.

This sort of performance might integrate (for me and my students) our purpose in studying literature or drama. Our aim would be the ability to talk richly (with creativity and sensitivity) about artifacts that make humans identifiably human. We would aim at understanding hard, theoretical analysis but also at identifying honest responses to aesthetic forms. Rather than taking the experts as the last word, we would aim at being able to listen to the experts so that our own responses become both more expert and also more open to alternative understanding.

Should college take up this aim with an entire course distribution area (15-20% of a degree)? The question becomes easier to answer after this thought experiment. Our students need to learn how to read expert literature and grapple with artifacts that don’t yield an obvious interpretation (think of designing an ad or trying to repair the HVAC system in a hospital). They need to be able to listen generously to other’s ideas and report back those ideas with accuracy and honesty but also go beyond what others say to new solutions. They need to be able to settle in on an interpretation of a situation without rejecting or losing track of the various alternative explanations. They need this sort of humanities.