“BC’s Magisterial Feminae Exhibit, A Humanities Experience” (original) (raw)

Art History Gone Amuck

Academic Questions, 2020

The cancellation early this year of a very popular, long-standing Yale undergraduate survey course on Western art understandably provoked a considerable outcry among cultural conservatives. As the latest rejection of an allegedly outmoded canon focused on "dead white men," the move was clearly inspired by the current academic obsession with "diversity," consistent with other like-minded curricular changes and with the introduction of all-gender bathrooms at Yale. Specious claims made by the college's Art History Department to justify the cancellation were thoroughly dissected by Heather Mac Donald. 1 Her perspective was informed by her having taken the first half of the two-semester course ("Introduction to the History of Art: Prehistory to the Renaissance") in the 1970s, when it was presented by architectural historian Vincent Scully, whose charismatic teaching became legendary at Yale and beyond. As she trenchantly argued, killing the course is yet another capitulation to identity politics and its assault on Western civilization. The chief focus of the recent furor, however, was the course's second half: "Introduction to the History of Art: Renaissance to the Present" (Yale HSAR 115b). Had Mac Donald gone on to take that offering, she might have discovered that even under Scully's inspired tutelage, Western art history was already headed down a dubious path-one far more destructively consequential than viewing art through the distorting lens of "gender, class, and 'race'" as envisioned by Professor Tim Barringer, his latest successor.

Call for Participation & Program " The Making of the Humanities V "

The fifth conference on the history of the humanities will take place at Johns Hopkins, 5 - 7 October 2016. The fifth conference is the largest in the series: more than 120 papers have been accepted for presentation by speakers from about 20 different countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Reflections from the National Humanities Center

In the article, the consequences of overly partisan behavior, the decline of civility, the unique DNA of today’s college student and the impact of technology, and the significance of the NHC in supporting a healthy university environment in which the humanities are front and center is discussed.

A 21st-Century Humanities for the Community College

New Directions for Community Colleges, 2013

This essay examines not only the role the humanities play in the community college curriculum but also how our approach to and understanding of the humanities must change. The defense of a 21st-century humanities has to begin in the experience of our students and not in the traditional canons of our disciplines.