Today, the Cornell Chronicle presents the first installment in a five-week series on the place of the humanities at Cornell. In this week's edition, we discuss the value of the humanities for the university and, indeed, for society, and give a flavor of the breadth and diversity of humanities disciplines at Cornell. In coming weeks, we will more closely examine vital, traditional programs as well as non-traditional scholarship that has expanded the scope of humanities studies. We also will profile faculty members and students and discuss the university's broad financial support for the humanities.
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| President Hunter Rawlings, right, takes part in senior lecturer Carol Kammen's freshman writing seminar in Mews Hall early on the morning of Sept. 11, with from left, freshmen Daniel Schudroff, Rich Rohl, Jillian Mikolajczyk and Dave Armstrong. Richard Killen/University Photography |
At approximately 8:40 a.m. on Sept. 11, Cornell President Hunter Rawlings joined a freshman writing seminar led by Carol Kammen, senior lecturer in history. The subject du jour was an essay by the late Cornell historian Carl Becker titled "The Cornell Tradition: Freedom and Responsibility," written in 1940 to mark the 75th anniversary of the Cornell charter.
Less than five minutes into the class, a hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. The catastrophic horrors that transpired in the next hour changed America. No one in the class knew this; they were all focused on the work at hand. It had been a "normal class," with the exception of the president's attendance, says Kammen.
That evening, Rawlings addressed some 3,500 Cornell students, faculty and staff gathered for a twilight vigil on the university's Arts Quad. They were there to mourn the victims of that day's atrocities, and it was one of the most anxious and solemn assemblies in recent Cornell history. In preparing his remarks, Rawlings reflected on that morning's writing seminar and on Becker's memorable speech. In it, Becker had called for a renewed commitment to -- in the face of an overwhelming evil of his time -- "the rational and humane values which are essential to the preservation of democratic society and of civilization as we understand it." Those values, Becker argued, are maintained and promoted by the university, and are "inseparable from democracy, if democracy is to be of any worth."
In the wake of a 21st century nightmare, Rawlings stood before the evening gathering to reinforce that notion of the university's place in maintaining and promoting such values. He recited the closing paragraphs of Becker's speech, and the august language came to life again and spoke to the immediate needs of a Cornell community seeking, not platitudes and promises, but a psychic anchor: the reassurance that "freedom and responsibility" and "good will and humane dealing" would prevail, at least here. Aggrieved listeners could find new meaning, even hope and inspiration, in the heartfelt prose of a man whose work was steeped in the finest humanist tradition.
Such is the power of the humanities.
"When we get into situations like this, it is stunning that we always turn to humanists for a sense of the past, a sense of the interconnectedness of human experience," says Walter LaFeber, the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of American History at Cornell. "Humanists are trained to express this interconnectedness and often they do so in very beautiful and poignant ways."
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| A crowd of more than 12,000 filled the university's Arts Quad on Sept. 14 to commemorate the events of Sept. 11. Robert Barker/University Photography |
Three days later, on Sept. 14, more than 12,000 members of the Cornell community congregated on the Arts Quad to again reflect on the events of Sept. 11. LaFeber and Rawlings were among those who addressed the throng that day, and they were joined by undergraduate theater arts major Jessica Heley '02, who read the moving poem "Easter Morning," written by the late Cornell professor emeritus A.R. Ammons.
This point is addressed in a work-in-progress titled "Science as an Incomplete Answer: Why We Also Need the Arts and Humanities," co-authored by Roald Hoffmann and Frank H.T. Rhodes, two self-identified scientists by training and humanists by inclination. The essay is an appeal for greater federal support for the humanities. Hoffmann is a Nobel laureate in chemistry, a poet and a playwright who holds the Rhodes Professorship in Humane Letters at Cornell. Rhodes, Cornell president emeritus, is a geologist and author, whose most recent book, The Creation of the Future: The Role of the American University, also addresses the future of the liberal arts in the modern university, among other matters.
In their essay, the co-authors state: "While it would be ideal to pretend that our society can survive in a world devoid of science, we are compelled to admit that our innermost yearnings for understanding are not satisfied by science alone. ... Without diminishing our national investment in science and technology, it is time to reclaim for the humanities their age-old connection to truth, justice, love, virtue and other qualities, which -- while beyond the realm of science -- continue to unite all humanity. A vigorous society requires each new generation to wrestle with their meaning and their implications, even as it extends the scientific frontiers. ... Both science and the humanities shape our society, nurture our nation and literally define our humanity. ..."
At the undergraduate level, the humanities perform a specific function: the cultivation of what Rawlings calls "moral knowledge."
"The development of moral knowledge demands that each of us answer the ultimate Socratic question: 'Who am I, and what should I do with my life?'" Rawlings stated in his October 2000 State of the University address to the Cornell Board of Trustees. "In universities, we should not forget, a major part of our obligation is to help 18-year-olds answer that question."
Cornell's administration, faculty and staff take this mission seriously. It's a historical commitment: Cornell endowed the nation's first university chairs in American literature, musicology and American history. Cornell was the first American university to teach East Asian languages and today teaches more than 30 languages. Although it is not an academic unit in the humanities, the Cornell University Press deserves mention as the first university publishing enterprise in the United States, and it is one of the country's largest university presses today.
Visual images are powerful teaching tools that faculty in more traditional, text-bound disciplines have used to create entirely new courses. Susan Buck-Morss, for instance, professor of government, has had great success with a course she designed called Visual Culture and Social Theory.
"Critical theory is an established part of political theory," says Buck-Morss. "We apply the same tools of critical analysis to visual images because so much of what we are exposed to is visual. It is neither media nor art study: we are examining the political implications of images, and we work to make it as theoretically sophisticated and philosophically intelligent as possible."
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| Undergraduate theater arts major Jessica Heley '02 reads the late A.R. Ammons' poem "Easter Morning" during the Sept. 14 memorial vigil on the Arts Quad. Robert Barker/University Photography |
In addition to the emergence of visual studies, the burgeoning American Studies program, with 80 undergraduate majors, is the site of renewed efforts at interdisciplinary cooperation and coordinated study in the history, literature and politics of the United States. Given the nation's diverse population and cultures, the program examines American experience in broad terms, drawing on the materials and methods of a variety of disciplines. Nick Salvatore, professor of history in industrial and labor relations and American studies and acting director of the American Studies program, explains the attraction of the major this way: "Students get to keep a certain intellectual focus on the diversity and complexity of American society, while at the same time exploring that diversity and complexity through multiple disciplines that offer a whole other range of perspectives."
At least 14 departments within the College of Arts and Sciences can be described as belonging to those branches of study that characterize the creative arts and humanities. Of these, several departments embrace both the humanities and the social sciences, for example: Anthropology, Government, History and Near Eastern Studies. Naturally the Department of Art in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning can be included among these. In fact, Cornell has a tradition of providing interdisciplinary scholarship among faculty that dates back to its inception. In his Plan of Organization for the university, Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White, proposed faculty lines that interpenetrated, with "one professor frequently extending through two or three departments ..."
There are approximately 500 faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences; nearly half of these serve in the humanities. This broad range of departments includes, but is not limited to, the following areas: anthropology, art, art history, Asian studies, classics, comparative literature, English, German studies, history, linguistics, music, Near Eastern studies, philosophy, Romance studies, Russian literature and theatre, film and dance.
But the Arts Quad is not the sole domain of the humanities at Cornell. Courses with a distinctively humanistic flavor have infiltrated far-flung campus haunts. This phenomenon is owed in large part to the interdisciplinary nature of humanistic questions that arise in the pursuit of other fields. Scientists in Wilson Laboratory teach courses nicknamed "Physics for Poets." In Science and Technology Studies, undergraduates sign onto waiting lists for an interdisciplinary course called "Biology and Society." Students in Astronomy 490, a seminar on "critical thinking" originally taught by the late Carl Sagan and revived this year by astronomer Yervant Terzian, the David Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences, ponders questions more typical of a philosophy course: "Can machines think?" "Is immortality around the corner?" and "What is the debate between science and religion?"
"The teaching of science or scientific thought is not the most important thing, nor the goal of the class," says Terzian. "[The goal] is the ability to critically think about various issues."
Developing the capacity for critical thinking is a province of the humanities -- and courses in philosophy are especially beneficial in this respect, says Gail Fine, chair of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell.
"Studying philosophy enables one to present, assess and analyze arguments critically, which is a vital skill in any discipline," Fine says. "Our graduates do extremely well in law school and medical school, but they also find the training relevant in whatever career they pursue."
Another variation on a humanities theme: Cornell's administration -- composed, itself, of many humanists -- continues to promote the study of ethics and moral reasoning throughout the disciplines. More than 60 courses at Cornell include discussion of the social, ethical or legal aspects of biology, for instance. The interdisciplinary program on Ethics and Public Life, led by Professor Michelle Moody-Adams, is engaged in an active role within the "new biology," and she is an important presence on the multidisciplinary committee that oversees the Ethical, Legal and Social Issues project (ELSI) connected to the Cornell Genomics Initiative.
Philip Lewis, dean of Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences, observes that the future of the humanities in the research university will depend on a collaboration with science, social sciences and technology -- but not in a subordinate role. In a paper titled "Institutional Humanities: The Marginal Center," Lewis says: "We have long recognized and often demonstrated the possibility of integrating the humanities and the arts with science and technology in ways that rationalize their coexistence and seek common, or at least intersecting, horizons for the research and problem-solving they pursue."
Lewis has urged that such a project be "asserted as the overarching collaboration that should permeate the whole of a university's educational program."
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| From left, undergraduates Leslie Marie Artemis Schildt, Mohammed Balila and Lauren Schwartzman listen to Professor Danuta Shanzer in Classics 331, Barbarian Invasions: Goths, Vandals, Franks and Romans, Oct. 23 in 122 Goldwin Smith Hall. Robert Barker/University Photography |
A major step in that direction was taken when Cornell Provost Biddy Martin announced the introduction of a mandatory summer reading program for first-year students. This year's book was UCLA physiology professor Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, an interdisciplinary tour de force embracing the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. While the idea was to infuse the freshman orientation experience with increased intellectual interaction, the vibrant discussions that resulted serve as a model for the kind of cross-disciplinary dialogue and diverse scholarship that the humanities at Cornell seeks to cultivate.
For more than a quarter of a century, the humanities at Cornell have advanced academic study on formerly marginalized peoples and cultures, leading to the development of the broad areas of gender and ethnic studies.
"While these fields have generated a certain amount of contentiousness within the academy and in political life, those earning degrees today are far more capable of broad thinking than those who graduated 25 years ago," Rawlings says.
From the civil rights movement and the campus agitations of the late 1960s rose the highly respected Africana Studies and Research Center, now under the direction of Don C. Ohadike, associate professor of Africana studies. And the Latino Studies Program, under the direction of Maria Cristina Garcia, is now working toward building a rigorous academic program.
"My courses on Latino history expose students to the (soon-to-be) largest 'minority' in the United States. According to the 2000 Census, the Latino population is now 35.3 million and Latinos are now found in almost every state, from Georgia to Oregon," says Garcia, associate professor of history and American Studies. "They exert an important domestic and transnational influence in politics and the global economy. Cornell students who go into the world without any knowledge of this influential population will be at a serious disadvantage."
Assistant Professor Amy Villarejo holds a joint appointment in Women's Studies and film. She teaches courses in fields as diverse as feminist thought, the study of TV and queer theory, and film studies. "In the current disciplinary waters of the humanities, culture is almost inevitably muddied by the context of its production, the lives of its makers and the horizons of its reception," Villarejo says. "While the 'best that has been known and thought,' -- as Matthew Arnold described culture proper -- continues, then, to move through my classroom, classic films and foundational theoretical texts find new company in queer avant-garde video, digital mixes and surprising currents in contemporary thought."
Because inspired teaching comes from faculty who are excited about their own learning, the newly inaugurated Andrew W. Mellon Foundation faculty seminar in the humanities this fall has been the setting for an exciting intellectual exchange among its 22 members. Funded through a five-year Mellon Foundation grant, the seminar emphasizes interdisciplinary collaborations that open new horizons of scholarship. The seminar is purely an intellectual enterprise; seminar members meet each week for two hours to discuss this year's theme, "Race and Ethnicity in the Study of America." The cross-disciplinary group is composed of four postdocs, four senior administrators and 12 faculty members, including a scientist and a social scientist.
"This seminar is really working for us," says Salvatore, who is one of its three co-chairs. "I'm reading across all sorts of disciplines, from philosophy to anthropology to post-modernist literary criticism, and the sessions are yielding good, substantial discussions and it's wonderful."
The wealth of offerings within the various departments, programs and facilities at Cornell puts a broad spin on the word 'liberal' in liberal arts. The course catalog is extraordinarily generous in scope and more than ample in depth and breadth. Undergraduates chart their own course of study in a college that offers one of the richest, most abundant and intellectually diverse curriculums available at any university in the world.
Cornell co-founder Andrew Dickson White's prescient Plan of Organization served as the template for the first truly American university based on "the close union of liberal and practical instruction," as White put it. What made the humanities at Cornell especially "American" was White's educational philosophy, which emphasized modern courses of study -- modern languages, literature, history and classics in equal measure alongside instruction in science and technology. White was not only the university's first president, he also served as its first professor of history.
Last semester President Rawlings continued that tradition by teaching a course on the political, social and intellectual life of 5th century B.C. Athens. It is a subject close to his heart and alive in his mind -- and he will teach it again next spring.
The humanities are alive and well at Cornell.
Index to the Chronicle's series on the Humanities
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