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Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go


michael

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I must need some sleep because all attempts made by me to figure out what 'humanities' were only ended in more confusion. I did, however, find this gem on wikipedia:

As Stanley Fish argues in his New York Times blog,[27] the humanities can defend themselves best by refusing to make any claims for usefulness. For Fish, the academic study of humanistic subjects derives its value only from the pleasure contained in the immediate activity of reading and analyzing texts. Any attempt to justify it through an outside benefit such as social usefulness (say increased productivity) or through its supposed ennobling effect on the individual (such as greater wisdom or diminished prejudice) is not only doomed to dilute its results but will further provoke demands on the academic humanity departments they cannot possibly fulfill.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanities#Hu...e_United_States

The first line is classic. I wonder if I can use a similar argument to justify my lack of productivity in the future... hmmm ... :P

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