Does the Decline of the Humanities Track the Decline in Civil Society?

Abstract

The following conversation took place on January 28, 2022 in Davis California between Margaret Ferguson, David Simpson, Andrea Ross and the interviewer, NASJ editor Andrew Majeske (AM). Margaret Ferguson (MF), Professor Emerita at UC Davis, is author of Dido’s Daughters: Literacy, Gender and Empire in Early Modern England and France, as well as other books and numerous articles. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is past president of the Modern Language Association, and she was co-editor for the 6th and most recent edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Margie’s husband, David Simpson (DS), Professor Emeritus at UC Davis, retired from there as G. B. Needham Endowed Chair in English. He also is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a former Guggenheim Fellow, and is a past president of the Wordsworth-Coleridge Association. He is author of many books, most recently of States of Terror: History, Theory, Literature (U of Chicago P 2019), and Engaging Violence: Civility and the Reach of Literature, forthcoming later this year from Stanford UP. Andrea Ross (AR) is the author of Unnatural Selection: A Memoir of Adoption and Wilderness and teaches in UC Davis’ University Writing Program.