This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "The Challenges of the Humanities, Past, Present, and Future - Volume 1" that was published in Humanities

The humanities have been an integral part of humanitys cultural structure for centuries. In this book, a number of leading scholars reflect on the past, present and offer their perspectives for the future of the humanities. The first chapter (written by Jennifer Laubenthal, Jonathan Helmick and Kathleen Melago) describes the vitality of music for humanistic study. Next, Kevin Donnelly provides his perspectives and research of the humanities as they pertain to Australian history. Professor Donald Elder then extols the humanities from a historical perspective, investigating key crucial events that have taken place in America. Literacy and literacy instruction in the past, present and future are detailed by Professors Thompson and Coffey, while scholar Paul Horton examines the plight of the humanities in the vise of K-20 corporate education reform. Emerging technologies in humanities education is critically examined by Arjun Sabharwal while Gerald Cupchik explores the humanities, emotions and aesthetics in a singular fashion. The realms of pedagogy and knowledge are explored by Will Fitzhugh and Michael F. Shaughnessy, while Greg Eft paints a panorama of concerning the definition of beauty as it pertains to the humanities. Geni Flores then follows in a chapter that promotes and accentuates the importance of multiculturalism and diversity as instruments of social justice. Josh McVey interprets Scripture and its origins within the humanities while Anna Beck explores historical American theatre and provides a glimpse of this realm through various windows. Opal Greer sheds light on what we may be able to discern from the humanities past and envisions the realm of their future in universities and academia. Professor Elder contributes a second time to this manuscript, boldly going where not historian has gone before and examining the relevance of space history to this subject matter. Bringing the book to a close, Herbert London offers his perspective on the future of the humanities. Scholars, researchers, critics, historians, art lovers, and musicians as well as many involved in education will relish and enjoy this rich, robust exploration of the humanities and its relation to the past, present and future.

Humanists, scientists, and artists collaborate to address the disjunctive temporalities of ecological crisis In 2016, Antarctica’s Totten Glacier, formed some 34 million years ago, detached from its bedrock, melted from the bottom by warming ocean waters. For the editors of Timescales, this event captures the disjunctive temporalities of our era’s—the Anthropocene’s—ecological crises: the rapid and accelerating degradation of our planet’s life-supporting environment established slowly over millennia. They contend that, to represent and respond to these crises (i.e., climate change, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, species extinction, and biodiversity loss) requires reframing time itself, making more visible the relationship between past, present, and future, and between a human life span and the planet’s. Timescales’ collection of lively and thought-provoking essays puts oceanographers, geophysicists, geologists, and anthropologists into conversation with literary scholars, art historians, and archaeologists. Together forging new intellectual spaces, they explore the relationship between geological deep time and historical particularity, between ecological crises and cultural expression, between environmental policy and social constructions, between restoration ecology and future imaginaries, and between constructive pessimism and radical (and actionable) hope. Interspersed among these essays are three complementary “etudes,” in which artists describe experimental works that explore the various timescales of ecological crisis. Contributors: Jason Bell, Harvard Law School; Iemanjá Brown, College of Wooster; Beatriz Cortez, California State U, Northridge; Wai Chee Dimock, Yale U; Jane E. Dmochowski, U of Pennsylvania; David A. D. Evans, Yale U; Kate Farquhar; Marcia Ferguson, U of Pennsylvania; Ömür Harmanşah, U of Illinois at Chicago; Troy Herion; Mimi Lien; Mary Mattingly; Paul Mitchell, U of Pennsylvania; Frank Pavia, California Institute of Technology; Dan Rothenberg; Jennifer E. Telesca, Pratt Institute; Charles M. Tung, Seattle U.

This book locates the humanities in six general fields of study: religion and philosophy, art and music, and literature and history. It offers suggestions for interdisciplinary work around topics such as punishment, and death and dying.

"Croatia is today popularly known as a beautiful country, with an excellent soccer team, but the rest of its long history is still not well known outside scholarly circles. It is less known for example that Croatia started as an ancient kingdom established in the 7th century. It lost its independence in the 11th century and had a troubled history until the first democratic elections in 1990 and independence in 1991. Since the Great Schism in the 11th century, Croatia has been the easternmost country of the Catholic West facing the Orthodox East. Attacked by the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century, it has been called ever since Antemurale Christianitatis (The Bulwark of Christianity). Croatia went through difficult times during the two World Wars and in the inter-war and the post-war periods until it won its independence and later gained membership to the European Union in 2013. This book reveals important information about its history, the struggles it endured to gain independence, the key problems of post-communist social and economic transition, and prospects for the future, summarized at the end as an analysis of its strengths and weaknesses, as well as its external threats and opportunities. The book is divided into two parts, "Croatian History Timeline" and "Past in Present and Future", because the Croatian past informs its present and future in a profound way. There are few sources in English that present so many until-now unknown aspects of this European country as does this book. It may be said that it is the first reliable and objective guide to give essential understanding of the Republic of Croatia published so far in the English language"--

Applying the analytical tools of GIS to new fields of research