In fact, Greenwood, Cornell's Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology, has been leading a faculty, staff and student seminar this academic year on the future of the humanities and the social sciences in contemporary, corporate universities. Sponsored through the Institute for European Studies, the aim of the seminar is to "establish the subject as a legitimate one for academic discussion," Greenwood said.
"Despite fundamental differences in their history, organizational structures and contexts there is a surprisingly similar set of dynamics at work across a wide range of universities in the U.S. and Europe, and beyond," said Greenwood. "How these dynamics are to be understood -- the corporate university, globalization, intellectual commodity production, etc. -- is not obvious. ... Their longer-term implications for the future of the social sciences and the humanities are not at all obvious, but many of the visible signs are rather ominous."
Greenwood's seminar was fashioned from a prototype faculty seminar created by Peter Katzenstein, the W.S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of International Studies and professor of government. Katzenstein's seminar explores the future of the social sciences in the university and also served as the model for an upcoming faculty and postdoctoral seminar funded through a $1.4 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, titled "Race and Ethnicity in the Study of America."
Key goals for the Mellon proposal at Cornell include a transformation of American studies that gives ethnic American studies a critical place in the field; a focus on ethics and civic responsibility in the humanities; and further advances in the emerging area of visual studies.
"The Mellon postdocs are part of a larger strategy for intellectual renewal in the humanities and interpretive social sciences," said Walter Cohen, vice provost and dean of the Graduate School, who co-wrote the Mellon proposal with input from other senior Cornell administrators.
In addition to these efforts, the Society for the Humanities, under the direction of Dominick Lacapra, will devote its 2002-03 fellowship program to the theme of the contemporary university from a variety of perspectives. In addition to promoting research on central concepts, methods and problems in the humanities, the Society for the Humanities seeks to encourage serious and sustained discussion among all members of the Cornell community and beyond.
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