If literary studies is a field in need of saving (and lots of people are making just that argument these days), then Jonathan Gottschall offers a solution: literary scholars need to become more like scientists.
His article is compelling and the kinds of projects he describes sound quite interesting, but I wonder how the rest of the field will respond to his ideas. Anyway, some key paragraphs from the end:
"The changes I'm recommending would constitute a paradigm shift. They would require deep alterations in what literature departments teach and how students are trained. Of course, graduate students would still take the familiar courses on Shakespeare, Victorian novels, and 20th-century poetry, but they would also take courses covering scientific research methods, the basics of statistics and probability, and current thinking in the sciences of the mind.
As the field developed, it would build a methodological tool kit that retained an honored place for the old skills of close reading and careful reasoning, but also included new scientific tools of study design and statistical testing. Literary scholars would keep their long shelves of books and their habits of good scholarship, but would also avail themselves of sophisticated text-analysis software, the psychology lab, and collaboration with researchers from scientific fields.
Above all, these changes would require looking with fresh eyes on the landscape of academic disciplines, and noticing something surprising: The great wall dividing the two cultures of the sciences and humanities has no substance. We can walk right through it.
If we literary scholars can summon the courage and humility to do so, the potential benefits will reverberate far beyond our field. We can generate more reliable and durable knowledge about art and culture. We can reawaken a long-dormant spirit of intellectual adventure. We can help spur a process whereby not just literature, but the larger field of the humanities recover some of the intellectual momentum and 'market share' they have lost to the sciences. And we can rejoin the oldest, and still the premier, quest of all the disciplines: to better understand human nature and its place in the universe."
5 comments:
Isn't Roanoke doing something along those lines --bringing different disciplines together (didn't Dr. Hollis teach some english courses or something like that???)
So, what do you think about the idea Heidi? It seems sort of crazy to me, but I'm not in the field.
Well, I think it's interesting. How's that for a vague response? I do think that literary studies do run the risk of alienating lots of folks if it doesn't do more to explain it's actual value to life and the world. But *how* to do that is a complicated question. These scientific approaches--which because they are "concrete" are more easily translated into wider conceptions of "value" are a possible strategy, but I would say a very limited strategy.
Here's a link that says some of what I am trying to say much better than I could.
Oh--and Shannon--what you are talking about is related to this subject, but in a reverse kind of way. The Roanoke courses are more about writing across the disciplines--an attempt to make writing a bigger part of all subjects and (by extension) tie different fields together.
Hmmm... I'm going to have to think on this for a bit. But, as you say, it is interesting.
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