Abstract
The raison d’être of the humanities is widely held to reside in its unique ability to generate critical thinking and critical thinkers. But what is “critical thinking?” Is it a generalized mode of reasoning or a form of political critique? How does it relate to discipline-specific practices of scholarly pursuit? How does it relate to discourses of “post-truth” and “alternative facts”? How is it best taught? This essay explores these issues via a case study of conceptualizations of critical thinking among cinema scholars at Stockholm University, whose views are interpreted against the backdrop of (a) debates about the value of the humanities; (b) higher education scholarship on critical thinking; and (c) the legacy of certain disciplinary traditions within cinema studies, especially the paradigms of “post-theory” and “political modernism.” The interviews attest to the persistence of critical thinking as a fundamental, yet highly elusive, concept to higher education in the arts and humanities.
Highlights
When the current website of the Section for Cinema Studies at Stockholm University was conceived, someone was given the task of providing a twosentence reply to the question “What is cinema studies?” He or she decided to lead with this: “The discipline of cinema studies offers tools for the critical analysis of moving images in historical as well as contemporary contexts” (Institutionen fo€r mediestudier, Stockholms universitet, 2017)
The study shows that there is a strong consensus at the Section for Cinema Studies at Stockholm University concerning the importance of critical thinking, both as a core value of the university, and as a cornerstone of good teaching
No single teacher presented a coherent and comprehensive definition or model of critical thinking, and one would be hard-pressed to identify a meaningful minimal definition of the term based on common denominators across the interviews
Summary
When the current website of the Section for Cinema Studies at Stockholm University was conceived, someone was given the task of providing a twosentence reply to the question “What is cinema studies?” He or she decided to lead with this: “The discipline of cinema studies offers tools for the critical analysis of moving images in historical as well as contemporary contexts” (Institutionen fo€r mediestudier, Stockholms universitet, 2017). Elsewhere on the site, visitors will find an interview with a recent graduate from the Master’s Program. “The education has given me a kind of critical and reflexive perspective on more or less everything I do” (Institutionen fo€r mediestudier, Stockholms universitet, 2016) These examples suggest that cinema studies scholars put a high premium on what is colloquially and otherwise often referred to as “critical thinking.”. Cinema studies departments rarely teach technical or practical skills, and the knowledge they produce is not self- translatable into specified career paths outside of academia. Perhaps they can cultivate students’ critical faculties in ways that will make them employable in a wide range of contexts—and upright citizens to boot. The study is presented with the hope of inspiring similar research and pedagogical discussions in other institutional contexts, adapted to local conditions
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