Category: Creating Conversations: Featured Posts
“It’s an opportunity to reflect on who you are as a person, and the world you’ve inherited—to look at the world and look at yourself with different lenses: let’s look at the world from the perspective of an African American who has just escaped from slavery. It’s the value of empathy and value of understanding. I think a good humanities curriculum will emphasize those values”
A topic that came out of most of our conversations—in more or less explicit language—was the value of empathy and the value of understanding and promoting diversity. When we asked Professor Behr... Read More
A focus on current events: “I think it’s necessary to the course.”
Should the humanities sequence be centered on contemporary social issues?
Currently there are several ideological and pedagogical debates surrounding the Geneseo humanities sequence: second only to the battle over the canon, the debate over whether or not the humanities sho...
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“it’s really not out of a conservative western point of view, but really, you have to be academically responsible”
The Humanities Reading List and the Liberal Arts
In our very first interview for this project, we spoke at length with Professor Asher about the Western canon and the attempt at Geneseo to make the humanities sequence a more global course. Profess...
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“we’re clearly in an era of constrained resources for higher education”
How does funding affect the liberal arts at Geneseo?
Because the humanities sequence is taught largely by adjuncts, funding was a large part of our conversations. Professor Asher, the director of the humanities at Geneseo, described very succinctly ho...
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