Human(ities) Matters: Academia, Community, and Civic Life (Roundtable)
The humanities as an academic field has always been predicated on helping societies harness critical knowledge in improving our understanding of the human condition. Yet, scholars in the humanities continue to have a challenging time bridging their work with the larger preoccupations of the community, continuing to be weighed down by the twin discourses of triviality or the “Ivory Tower”. The rise of public humanities–the work of engaging communities-at-large in the intersections of history, traditions, humanistic culture, and material realities of civic life–is a testament to the value that humanities scholars can bring to the public when they are able to translate their high-level academic skills into transformative prospects outside the university.