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. We think of the humanities as a cluster of
specialized academic activities. So they are. But they also belong
to the ordinary world, the world where students and faculty make
connections and careers; where they eat and drink and fret; where
they move through new buildings and old seminar rooms. In The
Humanities and Everyday Life Michael Levenson places academic
humanities within this field of daily life, where abstract thought
stands alongside material need. The humanities also live outside
the university in activities that have been overlooked or
undervalued: in book clubs, in historical re-enactments, in visits
to museums and libraries, in private collections, in contributions
to Wikipedia, and in amateur genealogy. These activities belong to
the humanities, quite as much as research published in specialty
journals. The Humanities and Everyday Life addresses both the
university and the world beyond, to see where they meet and fail to
meet, and to argue that the walls between them should lower. At the
centre of the book is an account of experts and expertise, a
controversial topic that poses questions about professionals versus
amateurs and what constitutes expertise. Drawing on the recent
rejection of political elite expertise, as seen in the Brexit
referendum and the American election campaign, as well as examples
from science and medicine, the volume reveals the unsteady boundary
between specialized knowledge and public curiosity. The Humanities
and Everyday Life asks us to accept that the humanities are as
enduring as religion, are indeed both rival and complement to
religion; and to acknowledge that despite imperfections, they give
an image of many-dimensioned life. The humanities are worth
improving on their own terms, but also because, just often enough,
they constitute an exemplary micro-society, one that will
illuminate still more widely when academic thought meets the light
of the everyday.
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