Tracing the Liberal Arts Traditions in Support of Service-learning and Public-engaged Scholarship in the Humanities

Abstract

Disciplines in the humanities have been slow to adopt service-learning and public-engaged scholarship overall, and scholars opposed to it often refer to the private goals of higher education, including private contemplation shielded from market and political forces, and furthering knowledge for its own sake in their respective academic disciplines. However, some scholars have embraced the public-engaged scholarship worldview, although they maintain it in conflict with the goals of humanities disciplines. Alternatively, other humanities scholars center the civic, ethical, and public purposes of their work. The author outlines the historical origins of the two main academic paradigms in higher education, the “orators” and the “philosophers” that led to these distinctions. The more “public,” humanities-based orientation, the orators, evolved first, and it offers its own justification for the humanities in support of public-engaged scholarship. The author proposes additional exploration of this tradition, particularly its understanding of knowledge for ethical and civic action through the “new humanities,” which can serve as a theoretical foundation for the humanities in the ways that humanistic sociology became that site of practice for engaged sociologists. Concepts, such as participation, beauty, and practical wisdom, can help develop an authentically humanities-based approach to engagement.