Rejuvenating the Humanities

The humanities are the human elements in any culture. In the West these humanities have ordinarily been anchored in and derivative of Eurocentric culture, and have been centered on elite and art-related subjects. As such they have strengthened and perpetuated elite culture, and have been restricted and narrow in their point of view. They have enervated the modern humanities which in a democratic society insist on having democratic humanities. Democratic humanities demand a new point of view which demands respect for and dignity to the common aspects of culture as well as inclusion of those elements. It is time the call went ringing through the land: The Old is Sick, Please Bring Assistance! Rejuvenate the humanities! The essays in this volume are Assistance, an effort to demonstrate the inalienable need for new subjects in the humanities canon and the value of those subjects as parts of the New Humanities. The twenty essays in this effort to bring new vitality to the humanities range through fields familiar in life but unfamiliar in the humanities canon. They include leisure, folk cultures, material culture, pornography, comics, animal rights, Black studies, travelling and, of course, the bugbear of academics, television. The authors include some of the outstanding scholar-observers of today, all of whom address their subjects in cool, dispassionate and convincing reason. The subject of revitalizing the Humanities is important indeed. This volume will go a long way toward alerting the intellectual community to the desperate need to bring new understanding to the study of the modern humanities.