UW-Madison ahead of humanities recommendations

Support for humanities research and education at UW–Madison seems to meet or exceed new recommendations by the Association of American Universities.

The report, released last week, issues recommendations for strengthening humanities and calls on university administrators to make languages and cultures, literature, history, and philosophy a major focus in institutional strategic planning.

The report comes on the heels of an announcement last fall by Chancellor John D. Wiley to revitalize the east end of campus, in part to unify humanities and arts departments and programs. However, the university already has a number of humanities initiatives up and running.

“These recommendations pay respect not only to the historical role the humanities have played in higher education, but also to their crucial role in the future of universities,” says Judith Kornblatt, associate dean for the arts and humanities in the Graduate School.

“No first-class institution can survive without investment in the humanities for undergraduate teaching, graduate education and faculty research,” Kornblatt says. “The report recognizes that this support must come in the form of strategic and financial strategies and planning, renewed fund-raising for the humanities, and creating linkages between disciplines and with institutions and organizations outside UW–Madison.”

The university created the Center for the Humanities in 1999. Director Susanne Wofford, professor of English, says the center provides important leadership.

“The center not only supports multi- and interdisciplinary initiatives in the humanities, [but] also programs that provide precisely the flexible structures for interaction and collaboration across humanities disciplines, and among humanities and the arts, social sciences and physical sciences that the AAU report recommends,” she says.

Indeed, the center acts as a gateway to humanities resources across campus. During the last five years the center has hosted and sponsored an ongoing series of workshops, lectures and conferences for on- and off-campus audiences. This is in addition to those organized by the university’s humanities departments and programs.

Wofford says the workshops have been especially important to on-campus interdisciplinary efforts because they foster the extensive cross-field interactions that the AAU report favors.

In addition, the Division of Continuing Studies offers an array of on-site and distance learning opportunities.

Almost all humanities are housed in the College of Letters and Science. In April the college inaugurated the Language Institute, a necessity, since UW–Madison teaches more languages — upward of 60 — than any other university in the country.

The new institute will encourage the study of other languages and cultures — another AAU recommendation — and coordinate research, teaching and outreach initiatives such as the college’s World Languages Day for public school students and teachers in Wisconsin.

Although the institute had yet to open when the AAU report went to press, it singled out its creation for recognition. The report also cited as a “successful practice” the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which supports humanities through awards from private gifts for faculty and graduate student research.

The university’s 45-year-old Institute for Research in the Humanities also supports and encourages scholarship by creating a community of resident and visiting fellows. Under director David J. Sorkin, it cooperates with humanities departments and programs to sponsor lectures, conferences and visiting professorships.

In spite of these significant efforts, Wofford says, the university recognizes the need to expand and deepen support for the humanities, which falls below the level of support for the sciences.

“The humanities have traditionally been underfunded on this campus and elsewhere, so the AAU report is significant as a means to bolster campus efforts to raise more funds for the humanities,” she says. “In addition, the university needs greater flexibility in fostering interdisciplinary teaching.”

To read the report, visit http://www.aau.edu/issues/humanities.html.