Readings In Numanities

This unique book gathers articles from the numanistic perspective of multidisciplinarity and innovation, connected by three main theoretical interests or overarching themes: music, semiotics and translation. Offering an eclectic collection of innovative papers that address such topics as culture, musicology, art consumption, meaning, codes and national identities, to name a few, it has a broad appeal across the humanities and social sciences. The contributing authors draw on various schools and methodologies, including psychology, psychoanalysis, social semiotics, semiotic modelling, deconstruction and cultural analysis. By approaching established themes in new and challenging ways, this highly engaging book has the potential to advance the state of the art in various topics. It appeals to all scholars investigating cultural identity, linguistics and translation, music consumption, performance, semiotic theories and various intersections of these and related topics.

The book aims to introduce a research concept called "Numanities", as one possible attempt to overcome the current scientific, social and institutional crisis of the humanities. Such crisis involves their impact on, and role within, society; their popularity among students and scholars; and their identity as producers and promoters of knowledge. The modern western world and its economic policies have been identified as the strongest cause of such a crisis. Creating the conditions for, but in fact encouraging it. However, a self-critical assessment of the situation is called for. Our primary fault as humanists was that of stubbornly thinking that the world’s changes could never really affect us, as – we felt – our identity was sacred. In the light of these approaches, the main strengths of humanities have been identified in the ability to: promote critical thinking and analytical reasoning; provide knowledge and understanding of democracy and social justice; develop leadership, cultural and ethical values. The main problems of humanities are the lack economic relevance; the socio-institutional perception of them as “impractical” and unemployable; the fact that they do not match with technological development. Finally, the resulting crisis consists mainly in the absence (or radical reduction) of funding from institutions; a decrease in student numbers a decrease in interest; a loss of centrality in society. A Numanities (New Humanities) project should consider all these aspects, with self-critical assessment on the first line. The goal is to unify the various fields, approaches and also potentials of the humanities in the context, dynamics and problems of current societies, and in an attempt to overcome the above-described crisis. Numanities are introduced not as a theoretical paradigm, but in terms of an “umbrella-concept” that has no specific scientific content in it: that particularly means that the many existing new fields and research trends that are addressing the same problems (post-humanism, transhumanism, transformational humanities, etc.) are not competitors of Numanities, but rather possible ways to them. Therefore, more than a theoretical program, Numanities intend to pursue a mission, and that is summarized in a seven-point manifesto. In the light of these premises and reflections, the book then proceeds to identify the areas of inquiry that Numanities, in their functions and comprehensive approach, seek to cover. The following list should also be understood as a statement of purposes for this entire book series. These, in other words, will be the topics/areas we intend to represent. Once elaborated on the foundations of Numanities, the book features a second part that presents two case studies based on two relatively recent (and now updated) investigations that the author has performed in the fields of musical and animal studies respectively. The two cases (and relative areas of inquiry) were selected because they were considered particularly relevant within the discussion of Numanities, and in two different ways. In the first case-study the author discussed the most typical result (or perhaps cause?) of the technophobic attitude that was addressed in the first part of the book: the issue of “authenticity”, as applied, in the author's particular study, to popular music. In the second case-study, he analyzes two different forms of comparative analysis between human and non-human cognition: like in the former case, this study, too, is aimed at a critical commentary on (what the author considers) redundant biases in current humanistic research – anthropocentrism and speciesism.

This reader reprints critical essays published over the course of a 100-year history that grapple with the challenges of defining and justifying the presence of humanities instruction in medical education. It provides insights to some of the newer approaches that branch out from the familiar subjects of history and literature to include theater, art, poetry, and disability studies. With a comprehensive historiographical introduction as well as prefaces to each article, including new reflections by many of the original authors themselves, the volume enables reflection on how the diversity of disciplinary perspectives and multiplicity of theoretical frameworks relate to each other historically and thematically. This volume is an invaluable resource for anyone engaged with humanities in health care education.

The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of 'the literary' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading. Medical Humanities comprises disciplines as diverse as literature, the visual and performing arts, the history of medicine, bioethics. It claims a vast range of philosophical and political agendas, goals and purposes, including the education of medical students in areas of clinical empathy, critical thinking, ethical awareness, gender and race issues and cross-cultural medicine. Josie Billington argues that in so far as literature is offered as adding value to medical education in health training and practice, that defence tends to become instrumental in nature, whether consciously and explicitly, or otherwise. This book is interested, more widely, in the power of the arts as a remedial force. Following an introduction surveying the idea of the Medical Humanities, its history, and its development, the book's four chapters will look at illness and health as defined in medical terms and as complicated within the field of imaginative literature; at narrative and storytelling within the therapeutic meeting of medical and literary approaches; at reading groups and private reading, considering contemporary models of literary reading as a template for redefining literature's place and power not only within the discipline of Medical Humanities but within the wider world in relation to concerns of mental wellbeing that affect us all.

Reading, Writing, and the Humanities is organized around eight classic, enduring thems and features extensive reading and writing for students. In selecting philosophy, history, and literature as the primary categories for grouping the readings, this text reatined this early meaning of humanitries as consisting of subjects whose emphasis is mainly human-centered. Our chapter titles are variations on some profound and timeless questions that writers and thinkers in the humanities have grappled with for centuries, while the subtitles declare the underlying issue that is the featured theme. Reading, Writing and the Humanities will stir awake the analytical and critical minds of students.