debating the humanities phd.
Jonathan Senchyne has a nice response to William Pannapacker’s latest screed against pursuing a Ph.D. in the humanities. Pannapacker’s article starts out as if it is going to mount a critique of the increasingly corporate, neoliberal university, and it hints at the rotten economic system of academic labor at research institutions. But then Pannapacker abruptly shifts into an advice column for aspiring humanities scholars. His advice: don’t be aspiring. The article becomes yet another condescending voice of jaded experience that virtually screams at young, innocent students, “Just don’t go!”
What’s so nice about Senchyne’s response is not that he disputes any of the worthy critiques Pannapacker mounts, but rather that he asks us to move beyond naivete or cynicism. Senchyne writes:
I think it’s a good thing to break down whatever is left of the romantic vision of humanities graduate school bohemia followed immediately by a career resembling your favorite undergrad professor’s. But if we’re going to banish the romanticism, let’s also get rid of the melodrama that Pannapacker and others offer in its place.
There is no doubt about the problems in humanities graduate programs, but Senchyne’s article also points to the enduring interest in humanistic, critically-engaged, and specialized learning, teaching, and researching at advanced levels. The real question is why, as a society, we are discouraging people from pursuing the acquisition and exploration of knowledge. The goal—and I think Pannapacker, Mark Taylor, Louis Menand, Martha Nussbaum, and others would agree—should not be to abandon graduate scholarship, but rather to reinvigorate it. We should draw upon the monastic tradition out of which the Ph.D. comes while also thinking about how to build exciting new passageways between the ivory tower and life beyond the campus gates. We should not get rid of the ivory tower, mind you, but rather recover the ideals of the traditional liberal arts and sciences and apply them to the contemporary world.
A humanities Ph.D. is not for everyone, but it should be for those who want it. Why? Because it’s part of what makes for the good life for individuals and for all. Because sometimes there’s practical value in the most unexpected and surprising of abstract pursuits. Because the humanities, as the name suggests, constitute part of what makes us human.
Senchyne helps here by asking us to move beyond certain binary dispositions. Instead of romanticism or melodrama, instead of entitled foolhardiness or faux-tough guy despair, we might turn to the hard work and fun play of reimagining the humanities—and perhaps society with it. Part of that task might start here for critique and here for inspiration.