"The Humanities, Then and Now - Reflections on the Dark Mountain Project" by John Cruickshank

Kudos to John Cruickshank for his superb June 26, 2018 O&I slideshow presentation, "The Humanities, Then and Now - Reflections on the Dark Mountain Project." John's multi-media PowerPoint slideshow of his talk is available here. A PDF of John's presentation, minus the multi-media, may be found here. All individual documents, links and other files referenced in his talk may be downloaded here.

Using the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) John presented articles and book reviews he found relating to a number of key words - "Anthropocene," "back to nature," "resistance," "Humanities science relationships," "selling the Humanities," among others.

The following is a selection of articles, books, book reviews and other content he found and briefly introduced to the group. After each entry are my brief notes taken during John's talk. Some of the following are proprietary and have paywalls. (Go here to download all the documents, links and other files referenced in John's talk.)

Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene (2017) by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt, reviewed by Regine on We Make Money Not Art, September 5, 2017, https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/arts-of-living-on-a-damaged-planet

-  Humanities and science links getting stronger. 

"Thinking about Memory in the 21st Century," a review by dorothy of Memory in the Twenty-First Century (2016) by Sebastian Groes (ed.), in Arts & Humanties Research Council, June 11, 2014, https://www.sciculture.ac.uk/2014/06/11/thinking-about-memory-in-the-21st-century/

- Beyond postmodernism. Literary criticism becoming more psychological, less moral or sociological. Mind and consciousness coming together in the work of artistic writers. 

"Book Review: Apocalypse in Mary Shelley's The Last Man," by Christopher Hewitt, Seven Ponds, June 27, 2014, http://blog.sevenponds.com/lending-insight/%E2%80%A8%E2%80%A8book-review-apocalypse-in-mary-shelleys-the-last-man

- A profound sense of cultural loss. Lack of knowledge and technology.
 
"Education for Survival: An Historical Perspective," by Richard Aldrich, November 7, 2008, Journal of the History of Education Society, November 7, 2008, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00467600802331895

- Survival of family crucial. Fragmentation and professionalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Education needs to focus more on the larger picture.

"Future Readers: "Narrating the Human in the Anthropocene," by Pieter Vermeulen, Textural Practice, June 14, 2017, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0950236X.2017.1323459

"How Western Civilisation Could Collapse," by Rachel Nuwer, BBC, April 18, 2017, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse

- Ecological strain. Economic stratification.

The Collapse of Complex Societies," (1988) by Joseph A. Tainter, http://wtf.tw/ref/tainter.pdf

- Retraction of people & resources back to their "core homelands." Homer-Dixon.

"The Return of Civilization - and of Arnold Toynbee?" by Krishan Kumar, Comparative Studies in Society and History, October 3, 2014, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/the-return-of-civilizationand-of-arnold-toynbee/FE6F858900CBB1843DD7C0D3DD5BE360
 - Toynbee's ideas popular in the 1950s and 1960s, a rival of Oswald Spenger. On Freud and ghandi on "civilization." Toynbee: Civilizations do not merely di, they also throw our their successors. How civilizations start over.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century (2017), by Timothy Snyder, Free PDF Download: https://edu.glogster.com/glog/free-download-pdf-ebook-on-tyranny-twenty-lessons-from-the-twent/2i8gatbocih

- On rejecting science because we don't like the implications of the facts of science.

Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments: Corpora and Digitally-Driven Critical Analysis by Kieran O'Halloran, Free PDF Download: file:///C:/Users/Jim/Downloads/9781315622705_googlepreview.pdf

- Deconstruction software to help find the underlying language games of power wielders.

"Making and Impact: New Directions for Arts and Humanities Research," by Ellen Hazelkorn, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education,  May 8, 2014, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1474022214533891

- Measurable benefits should be focus of A&H research.
 
GeoHumanities: Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizationshttp://geohumanities.org/

Geographic/Geographical Information Science (GIScience), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_science


- Similarities between science and myth, as metaphors. Harman: "Humanities are a process unlike the fact or theory finding enterprise of life science." ... Science took agency away from Humankind, has taken us further and further away from nature. Facts versus being, thinking. A common, consensus view in the scientific community - facts are most important and science is the only way to understand something. Science is a path to happiness. Yes, science has favorably impacted human happiness, but it's a trap to believe the new tech inventions will bring happiness. We should be skeptical about scientists' claims for making us happy.

"Review of The Googlization of Everything," by Christopher Parsons, Technology, Thoughts and Trinkets, July 18, 2011, https://christopher-parsons.com/review-of-the-googlization-of-everything/

- On the Humanities, their importance.

KEY POINTS

-Science is about finding facts and developing explanations. The Humanities are an expressive process that reveals being, living, meaning. The sustainability of Humankind and Earth requires an integration of the sciences and humanities. A consilience. With the integration of science and humanities we can/may progress & survive.

Thanks, John! Your outstanding talk expanded and help clarify our understanding of the current state and possible futures of the Humanities. Personally, it strengthened my post -Trump uncertain optimism about the role of the sciences and the Humanities in Humankind's future. I needed the boost...

John's talk, and Judith Moore's presentation on "Art" on June 12, brought to an end our group's study of the Dark Mountain Project. A brief summary of what we gained from this six-month project will be shared soon. 

O&I
}:> & ~:)

P.S. Here are two essays from the Chronicle of Higher Education relating to John's presentation. I found them after his talk:

"The Humanities As We Know Them Are Doomed. Now What?"

"The 'Two Cultures' Fallacy - Stop Pitting Science and the Humanities Against Each Other"


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