Why Study the Humanities?

Abstract

There has been a rise of what Daniel Coleman and Smaro Kamboureli call research capitalism in Canadian universities — by which they mean the need to leverage external funding through grant applications, technology transfer, and industry partnerships. This has put increasing pressure on the core disciplines to articulate their use value. This is true of the sciences as well as the arts. The latter, however, is the specific focus of Coleman and Kamboureli’s Retooling the Humanities, in which they gather together a cast of Canadian literary scholars that includes academic administrators (Findlay, Pennee), Canada Research Chairs (Brydon, Coleman, Kamboureli, Mathur), senior (Brown, Stone) and junior faculty members (Dobson), as well as a writer (Wong) and graduate students (Danyluk, Stephens), to identify the value of humanities scholarship, and its way forward in Canadian Universities.