Humanities, Culture, and Interdisciplinarity: The Changing American Academy

1. FORMING HUMANITIES

Chapter 1 FORMING HUMANITIES This story begins in 1636. When the first institution of higher education opened in this country, humanities played a central role. Harvard College was a Puritan-based institution with a prescribed curriculum based on the Bible, the classical trivium of language-oriented arts, and the quadrivium of mathematical or scientific arts. Students learned Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew , and Syriac, along with logic and rhetoric, history and politics, astronomy and botany, ethics, and catechism. The philosophical complement to this common curriculum was the idea of unitary knowledge. Together, these structural and philosophical principles shaped the educational programs of the other colonial colleges and, more generally, influenced thinking about higher education in the United States for nearly two and a half centuries. The central mission of the American college was teaching in the European and English tradition. The students, who came primarily from the elite of colonial society, were trained to take their place in prestigious vocations. The faculty, who came primarily from the clergy, placed classical learning in a religious framework. Individuals offered recitations and lectures in specific subjects. However, they were not divided into separate schools or departments. A returning missionary might teach biology or a teacher of rhetoric do double duty in history, logic, or metaphysics (Levine and Niddifer 54, 66–67; Hutcheson 105; D. Bennett 132–33; Bogue and Aper 19–20; Kuklick, “Professionalization” 43). Even though common principles would have a long-lasting impact, differences were already evident by the founding of the second colonial college in 1692. Modeled on the Scottish tradition of higher education, William and Mary placed greater emphasis on mathematics, history, and science. In the eighteenth century, new utilitarian curricula and chairs in the professions were introduced and, by the nineteenth century, new technical and vocational schools were being founded. Scientific investigation was also making inroads into the curriculum, modern and pragmatic courses were proliferating, and interest in vernacular languages was increasing . These changes prompted a prominent defense of tradition by Yale College faculty. The purpose of college according to the Yale Report of 1828 was to prepare students in “the disciplines and furniture of the mind.” The term “disciplines” connoted expanding the powers of mental faculties and “furniture” filling the mind with knowledge. Since the founding of the colonial colleges, exercises in grammar and mathematics had been regarded as the best means of disciplining mental and moral faculties. The most important subject was the classics. Patient study of the grammar, syntax, and etymology of classical texts was considered the key to the spiritual essence of ancient Greece and Rome. Yale faculty rebuked critics of this tradition, faulted technical or partial courses of study, and dismissed popular studies, modern languages, and professional subjects (Levine and Niddifer 67–69; Hutcheson 106; Kuklick, “Professionalization”49; Kuklick , “Emergence” 202–05, 210; J. H. Miller, “Theory” 121). Yet another change was on the horizon as well, one so profound that Laurence Veysey called it the first genuine academic revolution in the United States. Between 1870 and 1910, higher education was reorganized around twenty to twenty-five disciplines, each with its own department, major, and set of courses (D. Bennett 137). Even as disciplinarity was transforming American higher education, though, a group Veysey dubbed the “culture camp” of humanities upheld the values of the older American college . They extolled the Renaissance ideal of litterae humaniores, the social and moral purpose of education, spiritual idealism, and a conception of culture as process rather than research product. Some professors from social and natural sciences shared their views, but the culture camp was composed primarily of classicists and individuals from English literature and art history along with some philosophical idealists and college presidents. They preached a gospel of “civilization” and “cultivated generalism” that was also advanced by editors of literary monthlies, organizers of the fine arts in major cities, and an assortment of schoolmasters, authors, lawyers, clergy, artists, and performers (Vesey, “Plural Worlds” 53–54; Graff 85). Gerald Graff dates the emergence of generalists as a distinct academic type to the 1870s. In adapting the old college ideal of liberal or general culture to modern times, they formed a dissenting tradition that fostered a kind of humanist myth. The divide between generalists and specialists was not absolute. They shared the same genteel social code. Specialists were 12 Historical Warrants expected to fulfill responsibilities for general education, and many of them held...