In The Value of the Humanities prize-winning critic Helen Small assesses the value of the Humanities, eloquently examining five historical arguments in defence of the Humanities.

This book is open access under a CC BY license. The first of its kind, this Open Access 'Report' is a first step in assessing the state of the humanities worldwide. Based on an extensive literature review and enlightening interviews the book discusses the value of the humanities, the nature of humanities research and the relation between humanities and politics, amongst other issues.

Tracing the shift from liberal to neoliberal education from the nineteenth century to the present day, this open access book provides a rich and previously underdeveloped narrative of value in higher education in England. Value and the Humanities draws upon historical, financial, and critical debates concerning educational and cultural policy. Rather than writing a singular defence of the humanities against economic rationalism, Zoe Hope Bulaitis constructs a nuanced map of the intersections of value in the humanities, encompassing an exploration of policy engagement, scientific discourses, fictional representation, and the humanities in public life. The book articulates a kaleidoscopic range of humanities practices which demonstrate that although recent policy encourages higher education to be entirely motivated by outcomes, fiscal targets, and the acquisition of employability skills, the humanities continue to inspire and aspire beyond these limits. This book is a historically-grounded and theoretically-informed analysis of the value of the humanities within the context of the market.

The humanities in American higher education is in a state of crisis with declining student enrollment, fewer faculty positions, and diminishing public prestige. Instead of recycling old arguments that have lost their appeal, the humanities must discover and articulate new rationales for their value to students, faculty, administrators, and the public. Why the Humanities Matter Today: In Defense of Liberal Education is an attempt to do so by having philosophers, literature and foreign language professors, historians, and political theorists defend the value and explain the worth of their respective disciplines as well as illuminate the importance of liberal education. By setting forth new arguments about the significance of their disciplines, these scholars show how the humanities can reclaim its place of prominence in American higher education.

A passionate defense of the humanities from one of today's foremost public intellectuals In this short and powerful book, celebrated philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes a passionate case for the importance of the liberal arts at all levels of education. Historically, the humanities have been central to education because they have been seen as essential for creating competent democratic citizens. But recently, Nussbaum argues, thinking about the aims of education has gone disturbingly awry in the United States and abroad. We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world. In response to this dire situation, Nussbaum argues that we must resist efforts to reduce education to a tool of the gross national product. Rather, we must work to reconnect education to the humanities in order to give students the capacity to be true democratic citizens of their countries and the world. In a new preface, Nussbaum explores the current state of humanistic education globally and shows why the crisis of the humanities has far from abated. Translated into over twenty languages, Not for Profit draws on the stories of troubling—and hopeful—global educational developments. Nussbaum offers a manifesto that should be a rallying cry for anyone who cares about the deepest purposes of education.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Recession is a time for asking fundamental questions about value. At a time when governments are being forced to make swingeing savings in public expenditure, why should they continue to invest public money funding research into ancient Greek tragedy, literary value, philosophical conundrums or the aesthetics of design? Does such research deliver 'value for money' and 'public benefit'? Such questions have become especially pertinent in the UK in recent years, in the context of the drive by government to instrumentalize research across the disciplines and the prominence of discussions about 'economic impact' and 'knowledge transfer'. In this book a group of distinguished humanities researchers, all working in Britain, but publishing research of international importance, reflect on the public value of their discipline, using particular research projects as case-studies. Their essays are passionate, sometimes polemical, often witty and consistently thought-provoking, covering a range of humanities disciplines from theology to architecture and from media studies to anthropology.

New essays on theological, political, and contemporary themes, by the Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display. What Are We Doing Here? is a call for Americans to continue the tradition of those great thinkers and to remake American political and cultural life as “deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still.”

In Cents and Sensibility, an eminent literary critic and a leading economist make the case that the humanities—especially the study of literature—offer economists ways to make their models more realistic, their predictions more accurate, and their policies more effective and just. Arguing that Adam Smith’s heirs include Austen, Chekhov, and Tolstoy as much as Keynes and Friedman, Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro trace the connection between Adam Smith’s great classic, The Wealth of Nations, and his less celebrated book on ethics, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The authors contend that a few decades later, Jane Austen invented her groundbreaking method of novelistic narration in order to give life to the empathy that Smith believed essential to humanity. More than anyone, the great writers can offer economists something they need—a richer appreciation of behavior, ethics, culture, and narrative. Original, provocative, and inspiring, Cents and Sensibility demonstrates the benefits of a dialogue between economics and the humanities and also shows how looking at real-world problems can revitalize the study of literature itself. Featuring a new preface, this book brings economics back to its place in the human conversation.

An entrepreneur and educator highlights the surprising influence of humanities scholarship on biomedical research and civil liberties. This spirited defence urges society to support the humanities to obtain continued guidance for public policy decisions, and challenges scholars to consider how best to fulfil their role in serving the common good.

Academic Crowdsourcing in the Humanities lays the foundations for a theoretical framework to understand the value of crowdsourcing, an avenue that is increasingly becoming important to academia as the web transforms collaboration and communication and blurs institutional and professional boundaries. Crowdsourcing projects in the humanities have, for the most part, focused on the generation or enhancement of content in a variety of ways, leveraging the rich resources of knowledge, creativity, effort and interest among the public to contribute to academic discourse. This book explores methodologies, tactics and the "citizen science" involved. - Addresses crowdsourcing for the humanities and cultural material - Provides a systematic, academic analysis of crowdsourcing concepts and methodologies - Situates crowdsourcing conceptually within the context of related concepts, such as 'citizen science', 'wisdom of crowds', and 'public engagement'