In 1994-95, the Society for the Humanities at Cornell would like to encourage debate about multicultural approaches to the humanities. We seek scholars whose work explores the question of how such approaches transform our view of the humanities and how the humanities can refine our understandings of diverse cultural traditions.
This focal theme raises many issues. How does multiculturalism alter more traditional conceptions of the humanities and the place we ascribe to our scholarship in a politicized world? What does it require us to reconceptualize: our curriculum? Our pedagogy? The organization of disciplines and departments? The relation between “high” and “low” culture? Between traditional, modern, popular, and other forms? Between dominant and minority culture? Even perhaps, the relationship between the humanities and the natural of physical sciences? How does it relate to older notions of canonicity, logocentrism, authority, epistemology, literacy, interdisciplinarity and pluralism?
In 1994-95, the Society for the Humanities invites scholars to rethink the definition of the humanities so that it can more fully encompass plural histories and various approaches to cultural studies.