The conceit of my presenting was that it seems unlikely that a course on ‘the history of the humanities’ could gain much traction in the US. Although I conceded that such a course might fly as a special topics course for undergraduates at liberal arts colleges, or perhaps as an interdisciplinary course for graduate students, I drew on my own experiences at a big state university to contend that such courses would not be viable beyond this narrow range.
The reasons I gave for my claims included the following: most university programs in America today depend on enrollments, but our undergrads are very utilitarian in their course choices. Who might opt to take such a course? And then, too, who would teach it? Who among us is bold enough to believe we could cover so many disciplines, especially as we all feel we should also make the subject as global as possible?
A further set of questions I raised have to do with whether or not current humanists are greatly interested in their own disciplinary histories. At a time when we are trying to hurry students through graduate degrees, do we want to spend precious hours teaching them about long-deceased Italian schoolmasters and German philologists?
Luckily the audience, and my roundtable colleagues, were able to offer some inspiring examples of the way the course is already being taught. I came away from the session with the feeling that the secret is to define the course with present-day methodological or philosophical questions or thematics in mind (for example, “What was Information Science before the Computer?” or “Adventures in Truth-Telling”). In this way, a ‘the history of humanities’ might be taught by many scholars and made to suit local curricula.
The only question is: how would YOU do it?