Martha Nell Smith
Professor of English, University of Maryland
“The Humanities Are Not a Luxury:
A Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century”
Thursday, March 21, 4:30 pm, L-112
In the Distinguished Teacher-Scholar lecture she delivered at the University of Maryland in 2010, Martha Nell Smith analyzed the ways in which “the prevailing narrative—that humanities curricula, professors, and research cost but do not pay—drives discourses, which in turn, create realities” that tell us the humanities are “in crisis.” Debunking this “crisis” through both fact and good close reading, Smith argues for the centrality of the humanities to both the university and society. Smith will reflect on what teaching, research, and writing in the humanities means for education, for democracy, and some implications for the future.