[link removed]


** PRESENTS
------------------------------------------------------------

SUNDAY SPOTLIGHT
Icon Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.


** H. W. Longfellow
------------------------------------------------------------

As Professor James Hankins notes, people have been doomsaying the humanities for centuries. From the archive, three authors reflect on efforts to kill the humanities, the neccessity of appropriate marketing, and a way not to do humanities.
[link removed]
FROM SEPTEMBER 2024


** Rehumanizing the Humanities ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------


** JAMES HANKINS
------------------------------------------------------------

I was already being told forty-five years ago, when I was a graduate student in history at Columbia, that I was joining a dying profession.
[link removed]
FROM MARCH 2015


** Why Are the Humanities Deteriorating? ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------


** MARK BAUERLEIN
------------------------------------------------------------

If you can’t make a case for a discipline on the basis of the actual objects studied by that discipline, it’s doomed.
[link removed]
FROM MAY 2012


** An Inhumane Humanities Lecture ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------


** MATTHEW J. FRANCK
------------------------------------------------------------

Wendell Berry is the subject of academic studies and anthologies of essays by earnest young scholars, as though he were a long-dead philosopher—Hegel or someone of that rank.
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]

Copyright © 2026 First Things, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you opted in at firstthings.com.

============================================================
Our mailing address is:
First Things
9 East 40th St Fl 10
New York, NY 10016
USA
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
.