Reading List

This list draws upon scholars throughout and beyond Georgetown to compile a directory of noteworthy resources on the role of the humanities, humanities education, and the humanities career landscape beyond academia and in today’s interdisciplinary world, as well as a critique of current doctoral education and concrete recommendations for the revision of doctoral programs.

The History and Value of the Humanities

Brooks, Peter. “The Humanities as an Export Commodity.” Profession 2008.1 (2008): 33–39.
Proctor, Robert E. “Petrarch and the Origin of the Humanities.” In Defining the Humanities: How Rediscovering a Tradition Can Improve Our Schools: with a Curriculum for Today’s Students, 25–58. Second Edition. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998.
Celenza, Christopher S. “Humanism and the Classical Tradition.” Annali D’Italianistica 26 (2008): 25–49.
Bate, Jonathan (ed.), The Public Value of the Humanities, Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.
Clemens, D. (2019, June 12). The value of the humanities. The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.
Cohen, Benjamin R. “Science and humanities: across two cultures and into science studies.” Endeavour1 (2001): 8–12.
Haraway, Donna J. Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
Horgan, John. “Why Study Humanities? What I Tell Engineering Freshmen.” Scientific American 20 (2013).
Chuh, Kandice, The Difference Aesthetics Makes: On the Humanities “After Man,” Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2019.
Woodward, Katherine, “The Future of the Humanities — In the Present & the Public,” Daedalus 138 (Winter 2009): 110–123.
Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg. “A Manifesto for the Humanities in a Technological Age.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. February 13, 2004.
Williams, Jeffrey. How to Be an Intellectual. Fordham University Press. 2014.
Nussbaum, Martha C. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton University Press, 2016.
David Cooper. Learning in the Plural: Essays on the Humanities and Public Life. Michigan State University, 2014.

The Public and Public Sphere

Warner, Michael. “Publics and Counterpublics.” Public and Counterpublics. (2002): 65–124.
Arendt, Hannah. “Excerpt from The Human Condition.” pp. 93–113. From The Idea of the Public Sphere: A Reader, Section III: The Public Sphere Rediscovered edited by Jostein Gripsrud, Hallvard Moe, Anders Molander, and Graham Murdoe, 2010.
Habermas, Jürgen. “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article.” pp. 114–120. From The Idea of the Public Sphere: A Reader, Section III: The Public Sphere Rediscovered edited by Jostein Gripsrud, Hallvard Moe, Anders Molander, and Graham Murdoe, 2010.
Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” pp. 127–148. From The Idea of the Public Sphere: A Reader, Section III: The Public Sphere Rediscovered edited by Jostein Gripsrud, Hallvard Moe, Anders Molander, and Graham Murdoe, 2010.

Humanities and Public Life

Bennett, Jane. The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016, pp. 3–16; 159-174.
Sommer, Doris. The Work of Art in the World. Civic Agency and Public Humanities. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. pp. 3–15; pp. 16–80.
Jay, Gregory. “The Engaged Humanities: Principles and Practices of Public Scholarship and Teaching” (2010). Imagining America. 15.
Engaged Humanities : Rethinking Art, Culture, and Public Life. Amsterdam University Press, 2022.
Humanities & Public Life Book Series.
Public: A Journal of Imagining America.
The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook.
“Public Humanities as/and Comparatist Practice” issue of Post45, edited by Ricardo L. Ortiz.
Effinger, Elizabeth. “Embracing the ‘Workshop of Filthy Creation’: Frankenstein, Failure, and the Public Humanities.” Pedagogy : Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Culture, and Composition, vol. 22, no. 2, 2022, pp. 229–52.
Ševčenko, Liz. Public History for a Post-Truth Era: Fighting Denial through Memory Movements. New York: Routledge, 2022.
Pittarello, Fabio; Carrieri, Alessandro; Pellegrini, Tommaso; and Volo, Alessandra. “Remembering the City: Stumbling Stones, Memory Sites and Augmented Reality” (2022). AVI 2022: Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces.
Sommer, L. K., & Klöckner, C. A. (2021). “Does activist art have the capacity to raise awareness in audiences?—A study on climate change art at the ArtCOP21 event in Paris.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 15(1), 60–75.
The Routledge Companion to Public Humanities Scholarship, edited by Michelle May-Curry and Daniel Fisher-Livne, Routledge, 2024.
Public Humanities journal, an international journal for civic engagement inspired by humanities research led by Jeffrey R. Wilson, Sarah Dillon, and Zoe Hope Bulaitis.
The Failures of Public Art and Participation. Edited by Cameron Cartiere and Anthony Schrag, Routledge, 2023.

Rethinking Humanities Education

Smulyan, Susan. Doing Public Humanities. Taylor and Francis, 2020.
Smith, Sidonie Ann. Manifesto for the Humanities: Transforming Doctoral Education in Good Enough Times. University of Michigan Press, 2015
Fitzgerald, Hiram E., Cathy Burack, and Sarena D. Seifer, eds. Handbook of Engaged Scholarship: Contemporary Landscapes, Future Directions: Volume 1: Institutional Change. Michigan State University Press, 2010.
Guidelines for Evaluating Publicly Engaged Humanities Scholarship in Language and Literature Programs. MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Valuing the Public Humanities, August 2022.
The Effects of Community-Based Engagement in Higher Education: What We Know and Questions that Remain. American Association of Colleges and Universities.
Audrey J. Jaeger, Jeremy B. Tuchmayer, and Shauna M. Morin, “The Engaged Dissertation: Exploring Trends in Doctoral Student Research,” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement4 (2014): 71–96.
Anthony Grafton and James Grossman, “No More Plan B: A Very Modest Proposal for Graduate Programs in History,” Perspectives on History, 2011.
Cassuto, Leonard. “How to Go Public, and Why We Must.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018.
Cassuto, Leonard. “Can You Train Your Ph.D.s for Diverse Careers When You Don’t Have One?” Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018.
Cassuto, Leonard. The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We can Fix It. Harvard University Press, 2015.
White Paper on the Future of the PhD in the Humanities. Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University. December 2013.
The Sky Is Falling. Profession, MLA Humanities Commons, May 2018.
Boyte, Harry C., ed. Democracy’s Education: Public Work, Citizenship, and the Future of Colleges and Universities. Vanderbilt University Press, 2015.
Post, M.A., Ward, E., Longo, N.V., & Saltmarsh, J. (Eds.). (2016). Publicly Engaged Scholars: Next-Generation Engagement and the Future of Higher Education. Routledge.
Bell, Marissa, and Neil Lewis. “Universities Claim to Value Community-Engaged Scholarship: So Why Do They Discourage It?” Public Understanding of Science (Bristol, England), 2022.
Fenton, Will. “The Digital Humanities as Public Humanities.” Inside Higher Ed, 2018.
Gerben Zaagsma, “Digital History and the Politics of Digitization“, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2022.
Matthews, Paul H., et al., “Portfolio and Certification Programs in Community Engagement as Professional Development for Graduate Students: Lessons Learned from Two Land-Grant Universities,” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement n1 (2015): 157–183.
McCarthy, Maureen T. “Promising Practices in Humanities Ph.D. Professional Development: Lessons Learned from the 2016–2017 Next Generation Humanities Ph.D. Consortium.” Council of Graduate Studies, 2017.
Rothman, Joshua. “Fixing the PhD“, The New Yorker.
Boyer, Ernest. Scholarship Reconsidered. Jossey-Bass. 1997.
Rethinking Careers, Rethinking Academia, Series Editors: Joseph Fruscione & Erin Bartram, University Press of Kansas. 2018.
Bousquet, Marc. How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage Nation. NYU Press. 2008.
Newfield, Chris. Unmaking the Public University. Harvard University Press. 2011.
Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Harvard University Press. 1997.
Peabody, Rebecca. The Unruly PhD. Palgrave Macmillan US. 2014.
Mitchell, Katharyne, Practising Public Scholarship: Experiences and Possibilities Beyond the Academy. 2008.
Joseph E. Aoun. Robot Proof. Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, 2017.

Humanities in the Professional Field

Rogers, Katina L. Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and Beyond the Classroom. Duke University Press, 2020.
Maggie Debelius and Susan Elizabeth Basalla. So What Are You Going to Do with That? Finding Careers Outside Academia (University of Chicago, 2014).
Madsbjerg, Christian. Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm. March 21, 2017.
Humphrey, Chris. “Discover the 20+ transferable skills that make PhDs totally employable.” Jobs on Toast, 2017.
Fruscione, Joseph and Baker, Kelly J. (editors). Succeeding Outside the Academy: Career Paths beyond the Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM. University Press of Kansas. 2018.
Corrigan, Paul T. “Want a Job with that English Degree?,” Corrigan Literary Review. March 11, 2017
“That ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech’s Hottest Ticket,” Forbes.
“Why Silicon Valley Needs Humanities PhDs,” The Washington Post.
“What Can You Do With A Humanities PhD, Anyway?,” The Atlantic.
Rethinking Careers, Rethinking Academia series.

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