What's Happened to the Humanities? ed. by Alvin Kernan (review)

Reviews phy, and Gender." Wong uses two recent collections of Native women's life stories (one containing three accounts by Athapaskan/ Tinglit women elders living in a stable, traditional community; the other containing accounts by Native people, mostly academics, who have suffered displacement ofsome sort) to qualify the easy stereotype of"relational subjectivity" in Native and women's consciousness . The particular way that sense of community manifests itself in individual Native women's autobiographies varies, Wong demonstrates, depending on each writer's experience; scholars "must resist positing a generalized female or Native relationaliry or a monolithic community," she concludes (177). Gagnier describes varying autobiographical practices among English Victorian working-class women and men, demonstrating how individual autobiographies deconstruct when writers try to superimpose middle-class autobiographical patterns on working-class lives. Both essays raise interesting theoretical issues as well as suggesting primary texts with which few readers will probably be familiar, offering, as so many essays in this book do, direction for further reading and thinking. Women, Autobiography, and Theorywould make a marvelous reader for use in a classroom of advanced undergraduates or graduate students. It also promises to provide stimulating reading for scholars. While some of the essays are a bit jargon -filled for this reviewer's taste, they do represent trends in recent theory, and their inclusion in a collection whose aim is to suggest variety ofpractice is appropriate . At any rate, they are balanced with many selections in a more immediately accessible style. For its breadth, for its suggestion ofreading strategies, and simply for the number of primary and secondary works listed in its bibliographies, this volume certainly belongs on the shelves ofanyone working in autobiography, recent literary theory, and women's/feminist studies. *fc Alvin Kernan, ed. What's Happened to the Humanities? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. 268p. AnaLouise Keating Lastern New Mexico University While the number ofinstitutions ofhigher education and the number ofstudents attending them have increased dramatically between 1960 and 1990 (from 2000 to 3595 institutions and from 3.5 to 15.3 million full-time students, according the National Center for Educational Statistics), the humanities and liberal arts in general have not fared well. Between 1966 and 1993, the percentage ofBachelor's degrees awarded in the humanities dropped from 20.7 to 12.7, and the percentage ofdoctoral degrees awarded in the humanities fell from 13.8 to 9.1. AccordSPRlNG 1999 # ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 137 ing to editor Alvin Kernan, these statistics and others (which he includes in a very useful Appendix) indicate that "the humanities are playing a less important part within the totality ofhigher education in America." Divided into five sections focusing primarily on literature and history, the essays in What's Happenedto theHumanities?'attempt to explore this decline. In "Democratization and Decline? The Consequences of Demographic Change in the Humanities," Lynn Hunt analyzes the changing demographics and their negative impact on teachers. In "Funding Trends in the Academic Humanities, 19701995 ," John D'Arms reports on funding sources and argues that the responsibility for the humanities has shifted from traditional sources ofsupport to colleges and universities themselves. In "IgnorantArmies and Nighttime Clashes: Changes in the Humanities Classroom, 1970-1995," Francis Oakley reads course catalogs to examine the changes in how the humanities are taught. She suggests that the right's fears about curriculum changes have been greatly exaggerated. Margery Sabin continues this exploration of the humanities classroom in "Evolution and Revolution: Change in the Literary Humanities, 1968-1995," arguing that "innovation and tradition can be and are being effectively integrated in some current approaches to reading and writing in the humanities." In "Humanities and the Library in the Digital Age," Carla Hesse explores the impact electronic technologies make on research libraries. Like other contributors , she sees a shift in "scholarly and educational priorities" from the humanities to "the laboratories ofthe hard sciences and the professions." In "The Practice of Reading" Denis Donaghue draws on Shakespeare's Macbeth to argue for a return to earlier forms of scholarship, which he associates with teaching "great works rather than mediocre ones" and with scholarly "disinterestedness." According to Donaghue, "ifwe cannot or will not sequester our immediately pressing interests, put them in parenthesis...