ana keilson & justin reynolds expand the humanities.
Reimagining the liberal arts is different from revitalizing the humanities. There is much to admire in many recent efforts at the latter, from expanding general education at community colleges to reviving Great Brooks programs. But the humanities’ concern with “the human” leaves too much out. Today, knowledge of the natural world is mediated primarily by the natural sciences, while Indigenous thought has been most consequential in rigorously raising questions of the “more-than-human.” Any meaningful effort to reinvigorate the liberal arts must reckon with other, non-humanistic, domains of knowledge—both for the sake of the humanities and the disciplines defined in opposition to them.