Despite the exhausting college admissions process, the choices don’t end once we arrive at the University. When deciding on a major, we must navigate the opinions of our parents and the choices of our peers, as well as an extensive body of articles debating the value of certain undergraduate majors versus others. For example, conversation surrounding the futility (or value) of majoring in the humanities is well-documented.
In the age of Google, Facebook and Amazon, embarking in pursuit of a humanities degree implies a certain degree of bravery. As a humanities major myself, I will wholeheartedly defend the value of my education. Like many, I believe there will always be value in learning how to think, read and write well. However, although critical thinking is assumed to be embedded in the structure of humanities classes, we rarely challenge the assumptions intertwined in the frameworks of thinking within these departments.
Without examining the foundational basis for the fields in which we explore the humanities, we are not taking full advantage of our humanities educations. In order to do so, we have to familiarize philosophical and ideological foundations of history, anthropology, area studies and the other fields which comprise the humanities. If we take the underlying assumptions and frameworks of these fields for granted, we risk missing out on the value of our humanities educations.
A word which appears often in humanities classes is “hegemony,” which implies unequal relations of powers. Central to the notion of hegemony is an element of consent by the dominated groups. By failing to critically examine the approach we take to academic pursuits, we consent to enforcing the often problematic origins of academic fields.
Area studies — such as Latin American Studies and East Asian Studies — is a particularly demonstrative example of my point. Students who pursue these majors demonstrate an interest in the culture, history, language and politics of a certain geographical region while engaging with the effects of globalization. However, to embark as an area studies major, it is essential to consider the field’s roots as part of the CIA’s Cold War agenda, in which students were encouraged to study geographical regions to deter the spread of communism. Without considering this fact, we consent to reinforcing the hegemonic origins of area studies as a field.
Interdisciplinary programs such as American Studies, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Political and Social Thought address this problem by not adhering to any one framework of thought. However, my argument is not that every student should pursue an interdisciplinary major program. It is more than fine — even admirable — to be an anthropology or history or English major. However, professors should seek to change their curricula so they include a critical analysis of the foundational basis for the fields themselves. We absolutely must consider a field’s history, limitations and assumptions when we use it as a source of knowledge.
One might argue my preoccupation with the fundamentals of the fields that comprise the humanities is limiting in and of itself. However, one of the most important lessons a humanities major can learn is to avoid uni-dimensionality in our approach to the world. This lesson should be built into the way our courses are structured, so that it is impossible to graduate a humanities major from the University without truly grasping what it means to think and write critically.
Mary Russo is a Senior Associate Editor for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at m.russo@cavalierdaily.com.
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