To the Editor:
Recent essays on the humanities by Professors Williams and Spierling suggest the emergence of “hybrids” of humanities with other disciplines and the need for “collaboration with nonhumanists” in that “the humanities provide vital tools for navigating our globalized world” (“The New Humanities,” Chronicle Review, November 14 and “The Humanities Must Go on the Offensive,” The Chronicle, December 8).
By chronicling the areas of studies that draw together the humanities and “STEM or professional fields,” Williams provides an overview of the myriad ways in which the humanities have been harnessed to deepen the study of what it means to be human. His larger question is a compelling one: “While they each vary in focus and field, what do they all add up to?” While we need to do more, the public humanities have been fulfilling the interdisciplinary role that both authors seek. We contend that the public humanities serve as a model for academe to collaborate more fully to achieve greater interdisciplinary partnerships. We believe that the public humanities are not so much a field of study but a great experiment, a movement created in the 1960s in the immediate wake of the founding of the NEH and NEA.
Heeding the words of the founding legislation, “democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens,” Congress empowered the public humanities through a network of 56 state and territorial humanities councils. These humanities councils use federal funds to support local efforts to engage the public in the humanities for free. And these programs take place not only in colleges and universities, but also in middle and high schools, libraries, barbershops, bars, historical societies, museums, hospitals, prisons, and VFW halls — from Anchorage, Alaska to Zion, Illinois, and everywhere in between.
The public humanities demonstrate the relevancy of the humanities to the joys and challenges of our daily lives — from literature to clean water to disease to mass incarceration. State humanities councils, their staffs, and volunteer boards, leverage and champion the goals of both professors. Moreover, through the public humanities it is the public that informs the humanities as we gather in the public square and use the humanities to understand ourselves and others better and to interact meaningfully in this globalized world.
Ronald Nowaczyk
President, Frostburg State University
Board member, Maryland Humanities
Frostburg, Md.
Phoebe Stein
Executive Director, Maryland Humanities
Baltimore
