Thank you all for your thoughtful responses to the
Introduction and Preface of The New
Humanities Reader. It was really enlightening to read about your previous
experiences relative to the expectations for this course. We’ll have more of a
chance to see how concepts like “shared horizons” play out when we begin
discussing the essays themselves. A number of you, including Alvin and Sammy,
drew attention to the fact that this textbook emphasizes the need to make
connections between what’s done in the classroom and what’s happening in the
world. Something worth emphasizing in that regard is the fact that, according
to Miller and Spellmeyer, “the present is actually at least as opaque and
baffling as the past” (xvi). In other words, before we can go about giving
recommendations about what needs to be done to improve the world, we need to
begin with a clear understanding of what issues are at stake, and in what ways
these issues are intertwined.
I also noted that the divide between classroom and the world
is not the only divide Miller and
Spellmeyer identify: many of you also discussed the divide between sciences and
the humanities. Students like Renee took up the question of what makes the
humanities a distinct field of inquiry, suggesting that the humanities require
a different kind of thought that does not solely depend on specialization, but
that also leverages breadth of knowledge. Since so many of you are science
majors, I’m sure that the relationship between science and the humanities is a
topic we will return to throughout the semester. I liked Jessica’s mention of
the fact that humanistic study can inform our approaches to science, however. This
seems especially true when, as Amish notes, we approach writing as a means of
creating new knowledge rather than reporting what we already know; writing
becomes both a mode of hypothesis and a mode of experimentation, if you will.
A number of you also focused your responses on the ways in
which the expectations for this course differ from the “5 paragraph essay.” This
mode of writing asks you to become comfortable with uncertainty, as Miller and
Spellmeyer say (xxxiii). While it’s true that the Expos essay is far less
formulaic than other forms of writing you may have learned, we can still take a
systematic approach to this process that ensures both that your ideas are rich
and interesting and that they are comprehensible to your reader. As Salman
notes, the most important thing to remember is that you should make this
subject matter interesting to you by investigating aspects of these texts that
puzzle or intrigue you. That’s a good way to ensure that your audience will
also enjoy what you write!
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