Rejiggering humanities and social sciences

The liberal arts world is in a tizzy over a proposed reorganization of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Montclair State, which would rehome (or perhaps dissolve) nineteen departments in four new schools. Besides the two provisionally-named schools in the rather dark graphic from the Chronicle of Higher Education above (final names to be decided by the faculty involved), there would be

{Human Narratives and Creative Expressions}

English; Classics & General Humanities; Philosophy; World Languages & Cultures; Spanish & Latino Studies

 

{Interdisciplinary Programs and Writing Studies}

BA in Interdisciplinary Studies; Medical Humanities; Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies; Writing Studies; Language; Business & Culture

The reorganization has been rejected by the Montclair State faculty, their Senate demanding that disciplinary chairs at least be retained. But the plan (led by a professor of Religious Studies!) has been offered as a way of trying to save these areas of the curriculum which, at Montclair as nationwide, have seen steep declines in majors. Not only students but younger faculty, too, are already more interdisciplinary in orientation, the proposers argue, and might flourish in these new constellations, freed from the drag of departmental structures. But would this be new curricular freedom or just a new kind of constraint by administrators, now freed from faculty oversight?

The question isn't just academic. Similar things may be happening just 20 miles to Montclair's west, chez nous at The New School. The university restructuring plan, details of which were officially announced in various larger and smaller meetings this week, will see the shuttering, at least as distinct undergraduate majors, of several small social science departments, with the implications of the consolidations of several humanities programs still up in the air. We're told a budget crisis makes already planned change more urgent than ever but nobody quite knows what's going on.

Our provost argues that the last nine years have seen an "unnatural stasis" in our "academic portfolio." "Change," he reminds us, is "in the DNA" of the school! Meanwhile the president argues that a bright new future lies in defining the "distinctive proposition" of a liberal arts college in a university primarily committed to art and design. I'm not averse to such a reorientation (which isn't to say there'd necessarily be a place for me in it) but the faculty as a whole is restive. Is the plan really to save the social sciences and humanities programs or to do them in?

Aflame

Religious revival meeting!

This was the week for the first years in "DIY Religion" to present what they learned from interviewing fifteen of our alums. We have more work to do, drawing some more general conclusions from what were apparently warm and thoughtful conversations; that's work for next week. For this week we basked in the idiosyncratic accomplishments and inspiring ideas of our fabulous alums! 

We got the world religions in there too, somehow - and then some! Our fifteen included folks who've found their DIY way to being a devotée of Guanyin, an Islamic feminist, the director of an avant garde theater company inspired by Jewish textual exegesis, an intimate of Ram Dass, three Christian priests (MCC, Episcopal and... it's complicated), a Radical Faerie, a rap-recording reviver of traditional Taíno language and spirituality and a young Zoroastrian. Wow...!

Fly me to the moon

"It's so cool how faculty advertise their courses here," one of my first years enthused. 

Having done my fair share of flyering in recent weeks, I didn't have the heart to tell her that this is exceptional, a response to the provost's threat to cancel classes which don't get at least 75% enrollment.

Plutocracy blues

Mood these days? Check out this image from this month's cover article in the progressive Christian magazine Sojourners, "The Big Steal: How Billionnaires are Upending our Lives and our Economy."

Passing storm

Between seasons

Govern this!

Not perhaps the best designed visuals for our Faculty Senate-run Governance Day, but it was good to see a significant turnout, and to remember together that higher education is practically unique in being a self-governed industry, at least in part. There is work to do!

Not the least of our challenges - working out who can be elected to represent whom in the new restructured dispensation. Apparently our move to the "two college model" proposed by the president "as thought-starter only" at the start of the summer is as good as decided.

Blueskying it

I was surprised this morning by the clear blue reflected in some of the buildings you can see looking down Sixth Avenue toward the financial district. 

This reminder of open horizons in unexpected directions was welcome on an otherwise pretty grim day. 

It wasn't just the November weather, and the daily litany of political lawlessness and economic distress. Some of the details of our university's urgent cost-saving measures became clear today, knock-on effects of enrollment shortfalls that will affect classes and programs and faculty appointments already this coming semester. And all this on top of the ongoing reorganization demanded by structural issues! Higher ed in America isn't well, and we aren't either. 

And then I went to an India China Institute panel discussion on "News Media in an Authoritarian Age," where speakers on India, China and the US described what seemed a shared playbook used by authoritarian regimes across all three countries threatening the freedom of the press and the livelihoods - and lives - of journalists. The moderator observed, ruefully, that when ICI was started two decades ago, one would not have expected the three countries to be on a continuum like this.

The only reflected blue was the India speaker's confidence (based on the aftermath of the press repression of the Emergency) that the "hunger for truth and debate" cannot be extinguished, and only grows in times of propaganda and censorship. Once this authoritarian phase is over, that hunger will call into existence vigorous new forms of investigation and dialogue. May it be so, and soon!

Exhibit A

In "Theorizing Religion" today, students had 20 minutes to design a non-ideological exhibition on world religions. We'd all been to see religion-related exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History, and taken a virtual tour of the Museum of World Religions in Taiwan. We've also read critiques of the very category of "world religions." But it's easier to poke holes than to build up. If given the chance to design an exhibition of their own, how would they avoid these pitfalls? 

I suggested it would be good to agree on the kind of space to fill and someone suggested a circular hall, which I gave a single entrance.

Twenty minutes later we had three compelling and compellingly different exhibitions. One let viewers choose whether to start with "Practices" or "Death, Rebirth, Afterlife," or head straight toward "Divinity, Higher Powers," or intervening shows of texts and places of worship - each a medley of multiple traditions. In the middle of the room is an area for sitting and engaging the other senses, from scent to sound. Entirely optional pamphlets with analyses by scholars and theologians are available as viewers enter. The space has a dome-like ceiling across which various cosmic and celestial images play.

Another group imagined a constantly changing space, with semi-translucent screens hanging from the ceilings which viewers can move around at will. Each screen carries images of various elements of traditions and practices from around the world on both sides, photographs as well as artworks, some moving, which each viewer encounters in a different maze-like configuration. It is hoped that viewers feel free to rearrange images. Near the center of the space is a spiral staircase to a platform from which viewers can watch the constant dance of images and people below. The students also added new doors: the exhibit can be entered and exited from any side.

A final group went in the opposite direction. Visitors to "PATH" traverse a single tunnel-like trajectory, and see exactly the same things as every other visitor, in exactly the same sequence. On the way into this labyrinth, they see art works inspired by religious experiences, arrayed chronologically. No work is marked in terms of ethnicity, nationality or geography, but mixed among the works are descriptions of historic overlaps. At the labyrinth's center, viewers arrive at the present day, then wind their way out, this time encountering videos of contemporary phenomena. Images would again be hung from the ceiling, allowing viewers to see the feet of other visitors to the labyrinth. 

Which would you like to visit - or curate? 

Fenced off

Makes a cool picture, though... 

Autumnal apparitions

Native and interloper, at Blauvelt State Park, each a little otherworldly