Tag Archives: Humanities

Life Lessons from Russian Masters

By Robin Bates | Published: September 20, 2023

Acc. to George Saunders, much of what we need to know about life can be learned from Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol.

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Great Lit Is Also Practical Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: December 15, 2021

Two new books arguing for more literature instruction fail to make a very good case.

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The Declining English Major

By Robin Bates | Published: July 2, 2018

An English prof, sensing obsolescence, turns to “In Memoriam” (also Fowles, Wordsworth & Arnold).

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Lit Encourages World Citizenship

By Robin Bates | Published: November 7, 2017

Political identity arguments that demographic groups should stay in their own lanes fail to acknowledge the power of literature to “cross group boundaries,” according to philosopher Martha Nussbaum.

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Lit Frees Us from Our Mental Ghettos

By Robin Bates | Published: July 7, 2017

In a fine “New Yorker” article, Shakespearean Stephen Greenblatt argues that Shakespeare was incapable to showing anything less than the full humanity of his characters, even the villains. He thereby liberates us from our “mental ghettos.”

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Not a Reader (and Proud of It)

By Robin Bates | Published: February 23, 2017

What do a president’s reading habits say about his/her vision of America? Obama’s celebration of a diverse America is the vision of a voracious reader. Trump’s shallow narrative is the vision of one who doesn’t read.

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Using Lit to Discover Purpose in Science

By Robin Bates | Published: May 22, 2016

My Intro to Literature students, few of whom are English majors, are often startled to discover that literature understands them better than they understand themselves. Today’s post describes the encounters between two science majors and, respectively, Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” and Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior.”

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Attn: English Majors–Business Needs You

By Robin Bates | Published: August 11, 2015

Increasingly businesses are discovering that they need employees who have majored in English and the humanities.

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Lit Is More than Just an End in Itself

By Robin Bates | Published: October 13, 2009

Alan Paskow      Yesterday I talked about how Alan Paskow (in philosophy) and I violently disagreed with a series of columns that Stanley Fish wrote on his New York Time blog about the humanities.  Fish was going after those who use the humanities “instrumentally”—as good for something else rather than as ends in themselves.   Alan, […]

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