Advocacy Statements & Campaigns

Advocacy statements, examples of the importance of the humanities, and news about the past, present, and future of the humanities: 4Humanities provides a platform for endorsing the importance of research, teaching, innovation, and creative renewal in the history, language, literature, philosophy, the study of cultures, and other areas that help society focus on human values and needs.

See also the other materials gathered in our “Voices For the Humanities” section.

Opinion Piece by Christine Henseler, “Calling All Humanists: Let’s Reach Out and Touch Someone!”

Over the last few years and months, economic and quantitative data have driven public conversations about the humanities, emphasizing ideas related to “decline” and “lack,” “unworthiness” and “uselessness.” Through such notions, directives have justified cuts in funding and programs; they have oversold technical and professional schools and undermined the value of a balanced liberal education. […]

New Translations of 4Humanities Posts

Volunteers from around the world have begun contributing translations of selected posts on our site. The newest volunteer translations of 4Humanities posts from English into other languages include: Fabio Ciracì’s translation into Italian of Jerome J. McGann’s “Memory Now” (original English version) Dr. Nobuhiko Kikuchi’s translation into Japanese of Ernesto Priego’s interview of Daniel O’Donnell […]

“The Humanities Matter!” Infographic

The University College London (UCL) Centre for Digital Humanities–in collaboration with 4Humanities–has created a new The Humanities Matter! infographic with statistics and arguments for the humanities in high-impact visual form. [Download PDF] Countering clichéd, factually ungrounded criticisms, The Humanities Matter! draws on published statistics and a crowdsourced poll to give a shout out to the […]

Jan Bultmann, “Discernment: Advice from a Hiring Manager to Humanities Students and Their Teachers”

Jan Bultmann is a technical editor and social media strategist based in Seattle. This is the text of a talk she gave at the colloquium on Creative Labor and the Humanities at Florida State University, March 22, 2013. I’m not an academic. I’m not here to deliver a research paper. And I’m not here to […]

Why All Professions Should Care About the Humanities

In a recent piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Kira Hamman, an instructor of mathematics at Penn State Mont Alto, emphasizes three reasons why scientists should care about attacks on the humanities. She argues first that scientists, because they aren’t under attack, can lend credibility to those disciplines under attack; second, that the sciences and […]

Announcing 4Humanities@CSUN Mini-Documentary Backpack Project

By Kristin Cornelius This project facilitates the making of short, mini-documentaries that promote humanities scholarship by giving a narrative voice to the research process. Each mini-doc will depict the process of doing humanities research through interviews with students and scholars as they work on their scholarly activities. These short, 5-7 minute films will either be: […]