Cause for Celebration: Restorative Histories of Liberal Arts Practices
Public understandings of the liberal arts tend to amount to an introductory curriculum of texts in the humanist tradition. This project seeks funding to host a special session at Modern Language Association’s annual convention in Jan 2024, inviting new research intended to broaden, deepen and restore the origins of liberal arts beyond modern European conceptions to include classical, pre-classical, non- European and global findings on the subject. Beyond introductory curricula, the session attempts to revisit the notion of the liberal arts as training for political, legal and professional leadership, in the words of Isocrates’ Antidosis, the “καλῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων”/good achievements that would in turn be a cause for celebration.