The future of graduate education in the humanities at UC

Does graduate education in the humanities have a future at the University of California, and if so what might it look like? In this roundtable, the first event in the IHC’s Future of the University series, UCSB faculty will discuss innovative graduate programs and initiatives that transcend disciplinary boundaries and train students for the new intellectual, professional, and economic landscape of the twenty-first century. Participants will include L&S Executive Dean David Marshall, Mary Bucholtz (Linguistics), Susan Derwin (German, Slavic & Semitic Studies), Carl Gutierrez-Jones (English), Alan Liu (English), Patrick McCray (History), and Janet Walker (Film & Media Studies).
The program was conceived last spring after the uproar over Mark C. Taylor’s Op Ed piece in the New York Times criticizing graduate education in the humanities (op-ed).
The program took on more urgency as the dire UC funding picture became clearer.
Panelists will give a brief over-view of their graduate programs and discuss what motivated them to move outside the parameters of their department/discipline to establish an interdisciplinary center/program at the graduate level. They’ll discuss what the advantage of this move has been to them and to their graduate students, as well as its challenges.It’s hoped that the panel will generate discussion and new ideas about how to approach graduate education and graduate funding in this era of shrinking resources.

Sponsored by the IHC’s Future of the University series.

hm 10/4/09, 10/12/09