Blow Up The Humanities with Toby Miller
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description
These files for the NITLE seminar of 11/14/12.
Transcript of Blow Up The Humanities with Toby Miller
Between 1970-71 and 2003-04, English majors declined from 7.6 to 3.9 percent of the national total, other languages and literatures dropped from 2.5 to 1.3 percent, philosophy and religious studies from 0.9 to 0.7 percent, and history from 18.5 to 10.7 percent.
1970-71
1975-76
1980-81
1985-86
1990-91
1995-96
1998-99
1999-2000
2000-01
2001-02
2002-03
2003-04
2004-05
2005-06
2006-07
2007-08
2008-09
2009-100
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
300,000
Social sciences and history ........................................Philosophy and religious studies ..................................Foreign languages, literatures, and linguistics .........................English language and literature/letters .......................
In the same period, business enrollments increased by 176 percent, and communication studies shot up 616 percent.
1970-71
1975-76
1980-81
1985-86
1990-91
1995-96
1998-99
1999-2000
2000-01
2001-02
2002-03
2003-04
2004-05
2005-06
2006-07
2007-08
2008-09
2009-100
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
300,000
350,000
400,000
Business ...........................................................Communication, journalism, and related programs ..............................................English language and literature/letters .......................Foreign languages, literatures, and linguistics .........................Philosophy and religious studies ..................................Social sciences and history ........................................
1970-71
1975-76
1980-81
1985-86
1990-91
1995-96
1998-99
1999-2000
2000-01
2001-02
2002-03
2003-04
2004-05
2005-06
2006-07
2007-08
2008-09
2009-100
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
300,000
350,000
400,000
Area, ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies ...................................Business ...........................................................Communication, journalism, and related programs ..............................................English language and literature/letters .......................Foreign languages, literatures, and linguistics ......................... Liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humani-ties .............................................Multi/interdisciplinary studies ................................Philosophy and religious studies ..................................Social sciences and history ........................................
Barack Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address called for increased expenditure on research, education, and teachers of mathematics and science.
He did not mention the humanities.
The Republican Party has announced its desire to exterminate the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
The National Science Foundation received US$3 billion for research.
The National Endowment for the Arts received $50 million.
It provided not a cent to humanities research; Unless you count the $14 billion allocated for food stamps – which increasingly supplement the income of low-paid humanities adjuncts.
Compared with other fields, tenure-track hiring in language and literature occurs at two-thirds the national average. In 2009, just 53 percent of humanities faculty was in full-time employment, and an even smaller proportion in tenurable positions.
In 2003, health academics were paid an average of $6,000 more than in 1987, during which time the humanities average declined by a thousand dollars; in 2005-06, a business academic cost twice as much as a humanities one, compared to one and a half times as much twenty years earlier.
