humanities reflective essay

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Reflecting on the humanities

Patricia Meyer Spacks is the Edgar F. Shannon Professor Emerita of English at the University of Virginia and chair of the Visiting Scholars Program at the American Academy. A Fellow of the American Academy since 1994, she served as its president from 2001–2006. Her recent books include Novel Beginnings: Experiments in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction  (2006) and Reading Eighteenth- Century Poetry  (forthcoming, 2009). She is vice chair of the National Humanities Center trustees.

Leslie Berlowitz, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2004, is the Academy’s Chief Executive Officer and William T. Golden Chair. She formerly served as vice president at New York University and was the founding director of the NYU Humanities Council. Her publications include America in Theory  (with Denis Donoghue and Louis Menand, 1988) and Greenwich Village: Culture and Counterculture  (with Rick Beard, 1993). She contributed a chapter to the recently published Letters to the Next President: Strengthening America’s Foundation in Higher Education  (2008).

The essays assembled here enact as well as reflect the humanities. As they explore the twenty-first-century state of humanistic study and humanistic commitment, they exemplify historical awareness,analytic power, and critical consciousness. In all their variety and energy, these essays demonstrate that the humanities remain alive and well – despite inadequate funding, insufficient jobs, and widespread misunderstanding of what, exactly, humanistic study involves and offers to society: all topics that appear in this collection.

The confidence marking these reflections combines with a sense of urgency. The essayists project confidence not because they believe that everyone understands the importance of the humanities or because they think that all problems have been solved: quite the contrary. They delineate a set of ongoing issues, both practical and theoretical. Their confidence comes from conviction of their enterprise’s value; their urgency at least partly from the need to make that value more apparent.

Humanists now have a new sense of their undertaking. Acknowledging problems in their situation and their practices, they discover and embrace fresh possibilities. Accustomed to asking large questions, humanists requested to reflect on their enterprise ask them. They offer provocative answers that often lead to further questions.

We read that humanistic knowledge is the necessary foundation of a democratic society; it can even provide a valuable basis for a career in business. We learn that the humanities reflect their times, even as they bring the past to bear on the present. To think of the “extreme imaginative poverty” of a world without literature reveals something of what the humanities do. Historians continue to find themselves under great pressure, but an evolving “postmodern” perspective might help them. Such observations suggest the range of concerns touched on here.

Arguably as significant and as important as the content of these essays is their tone. The sense of assurance conveyed by the reflections here contrasts with the atmosphere of the memorable volume published in 1997, What’s Happened to the Humanities?, edited by Alvin Kernan, which suggested how much had gone wrong. Some of the difficulties identified by the writers in Kernan’s book have actually worsened. Thus Harriet Zuckerman and Ronald Ehrenberg, examining the current state of funding for the humanities in a thoughtful, well-documented essay, conclude that there is “some [cause] for pessimism, and much that leads to uneasiness” in the chronic underfunding experienced by the humanistic disciplines. They do not expect matters to improve any time soon, given that “the benefits the academic humanities confer on society are not understood well enough, by a sufficient number” – a problem that the present collection tries to address. Libraries face crises not only of funding but of space, of use, and of accessibility. Young academics have difficulty finding publishers and distinguishing themselves in a crowded profession. Those professing the digital humanities find conventional departments reluctant to use scarce resources to explore potential new directions.

Nonetheless, the writers of these reflections, from various professional perspectives (philanthropist, university president, provost, former college president, foundation executives, leading members of the professoriate), look to the future with hope and with imagination. James O’Donnell points out that there is every reason for pessimism about the future – but also every reason for optimism. He raises many questions, pointing out the need for “a combination of original work and imaginative presentation”; and he clearly believes such combination possible. Edward Ayers calls on the humanities to “put themselves in play, at risk, in the world.” Caroline Bynum imagines a way to combat excessive pressure on young academics by using insights gained from the recent studies of history as a discipline. Kathleen Woodward describes the ways serious scholarship is brought to the wider public.

Communicating the excitement of intellectual possibility, these essays dramatize the humanities’ inclusiveness: the diversity of individual contributions suggests the range of approaches within the broad category of humanistic enterprise. Don Randel claims as a domain of the humanities “the study of, contemplation of, and exploration of what it means to be a human being.” To engage in such study demands a broad spectrum of resources. The present collection deploys many of them.

Contributors to this group of essays had available to them a collection of new data documenting the state of the humanities in our nation. The American Academy has recently introduced the Humanities Indicators prototype, an online resource containing seventy-four indicators and over two hundred graphs and charts tracking trends in five areas: primary and secondary education; undergraduate and graduate education; the humanities workforce; humanities research and funding; and the humanities in American life. This prototype was inspired by the thirty-six-year-old Science and Engineering Indicators of the National Science Foundation, which has been indispensable to educators and policy-makers interested in America’s competitiveness in science and technology. Until now, no comparable compendium of data about the state of the humanities has existed. As a result, Francis Oakley has noted:

Generalizations made about the humanities, whether critical or supportive, have tended to be characterized by a genial species of disheveled anecdotalism, punctuated unhelpfully from time to time by moments of cranky but attention-catching dyspepsia. 1

The Academy’s efforts to remedy this situation have proceeded along two parallel tracks: the development of the Humanities Indicators, based on existing data, and the Humanities Departmental Survey project, the collection of new data. The Humanities Departmental Survey was sent to 1,485 departments in seven humanities disciplines: history, religion, English, foreign language, history of science, art history, and linguistics. The survey covers such topics as faculty hiring patterns, faculty teaching loads, faculty policies, tenure policies, teaching and instruction, and aspects of the student experience.

The American Academy has played a pivotal role in establishing such important institutions as the American Council of Learned Societies, the Independent Research Libraries Association, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and the National Humanities Center. The Initiative for Humanities and Culture, launched in 1998, continues the Academy’s effort to advance and advocate for the humanities.

Projects under the auspices of the Initiative have involved hundreds of participants, sponsored original research, and produced several published volumes of essays exploring the state of the humanities and the evolution of its disciplines and institutions. We anticipate that ongoing projects of the Initiative, like the Humanities Indicators, along with public forums including this special issue of Dædalus , will continue to provide serious reflections on the humanities, inspire new ideas, and generate new conversations about the vital role the humanities play in American life.

• 1 Francis Oakley, from his presentation about the Academy’s Initiative for Humanities and Culture, October 11, 2008, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

16.8 Spotlight on … Humanities

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe various disciplines in the humanities.
• Evaluate employment opportunities for graduates with humanities degrees.

Although all college instructors value good writing, each area of study has its own set of criteria by which writing is judged. For instance, the loose informal style and speculative content of a reflective essay might be appropriate for an English class but inappropriate for an anthropology class in which the instructor would expect the more formal structures established in that subject area.

As a discipline, the humanities include subjects that focus on human culture and values. Some subjects are literature, languages, classics, art history, film, musicology, philosophy, religion, and often history, which sometimes is placed in the social sciences. The humanities are the foundation of liberal arts and, as such, include a wide variety of writing genres. Research reports, biographies, literary analyses, ethnographies, quantitative reports, proposals, books, journal articles, poetry, film scripts, novels, stories, technical writing, and professional documents are forms of writing particular to the humanities.

As a rule, knowledge in the humanities focuses on texts and on individual ideas, speculations, insights, and imaginative connections. Interpretation in the humanities is thus relatively subjective. Accordingly, much of the writing and research in the humanities is characterized by personal involvement, lively language, and speculative or open-ended conclusions.

The field of English includes the study of not only literature but of literary theory and history, and not only composition but creative and technical writing. In addition, English departments often include linguistics, journalism, folklore, women’s studies, cultural or ethnic studies, and film. In other words, within even one discipline, you might be asked to write several distinct types of papers: personal experience essays for a composition course, analyses for a literature course, abstracts or case studies for a linguistics course, procedural texts for a technical writing course, and short stories for a creative writing course. Consequently, any observations about the different kinds of knowledge and the differing conventions for writing about them are only generalizations. The more carefully you study any one discipline, the more complex it becomes, and the harder it is to make a generalization that does not have numerous explanations.

Careers in the Humanities

Because humanities subjects emphasize critical thinking and clear writing, the skills humanities students obtain are valued in many fields other than the most obvious ones. Humanities majors have gone on to careers in law, medicine (humanities plus pre-med), advertising, journalism, TV and film writing and production, public relations, graphic design, teaching, technical and medical/scientific writing, human resources, and many others. For more information about career opportunities for humanities students, see these sites:

• Humanities and Social Sciences Careers
• Top 10 Highest Paying Jobs for Liberal Arts Majors
• 25 Great Jobs for Humanities Majors

Students’ Stories

Despite strong interest in the humanities—especially in reading, writing, and language—some students avoid humanities subjects as majors because they think they won’t find jobs after graduation. Such fear, however, is unwarranted, as many organizations actively seek students who major in languages or in other humanities disciplines. These graduates are valued for their ability to interpret and analyze text and to write clear, concise, and compelling prose. Moreover, employers realize that students who concentrate on studying people—whether real or fictional—develop insights into human behavior and understanding of how to deal with it. For example, these students who graduated with degrees in humanities subjects have found rewarding work in humanities-related and business fields.

Gabriela Torres majored in film studies, with a minor in theater. Although more interested in the technical aspects of both, she took creative writing classes and enjoyed performing in several college productions. Soon after graduation, Gabriela joined the human resources (HR) department of midsized corporation. Her job is to train new hires and conduct in-service workshops for current employees. Recently her role has expanded to writing, producing, and acting in training videos in which she uses the skills she learned in college—and more.

Derrek Wilson became an international studies major after he received a summer stipend to study in Europe. After only a few weeks there and trips to historic sites, Derrek says he got “hooked on history.” The broad focus of his interdisciplinary major allowed him to take courses in humanities subjects: history, geography, religion, archaeology, and world literature. He had studied Spanish in high school and continued in college. Derrek graduated last year and now works as an international program coordinator for his university. Responsible for logistics of foreign students coming to the United States and for American students going abroad, he oversees housing accommodations, student visas, and travel arrangements. He loves his job and the time he gets to spend in different countries, but he plans to go to law school in a few years—with, you guessed it, a specialty in international and immigration law.

Despite his parents’ warnings that he’d never find a good job, Nick Marelli majored in English. He put his literary interests to work in college as managing editor of the literary magazine and arts editor of the newspaper. When he graduated, he applied, on a whim (and to please his parents), for a management trainee position at a large insurance company. Thinking he would get nowhere without business courses, he was surprised when a recruiter called him for an interview. The interviewer then told him that the company actively seeks English majors because they know how to read carefully, digest and summarize information, think critically, and write clearly, concisely, and correctly. Nick says, “I was surprised when I heard someone other than an English teacher say that. I really like my work, where I’m learning a lot on the spot rather than in a classroom.”

Thinking, Writing, and Publishing

Critical writing requires critical thinking. When an individual or collaborative team articulates their perspective, they provide new knowledge for audiences. In essence, all texts have potential to create new knowledge. A writer of any type of text has the potential to enter a conversation and show audiences new ways to look at a subject.

Learning how to write analytically and critically offers a skill set for crafting various genres, such as information reports, proposals, cost/benefit analyses, instructions, and so on. After you have completed your analysis for this chapter, consider submitting it to an open-access academic journal that highlights the work of undergraduate students in the humanities, such as these:

Undergraduate Journal of Humanistic Studies

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Writing for the Humanities and Arts Portfolio

Elizabeth fernandez fermin.

Reflective Essay

This semester has allowed me to grow in many ways, not just as a writer but as a learner. When we were introduced with the question, “What does the Humanities mean to you,” I realized that a lot of times these classes are not appreciated enough for the freedom and wisdom they give you. Starting with the literacy narrative all the way to the research paper, I could not only explore myself in terms of language and how to interact with it, but I also got to expand my knowledge on subjects that I found interesting and important. Throughout the semester, I learned how to successfully draw in the audience I want to address, revised my writing carefully for grammatical errors, and express thoroughly what I wanted to convey. Class discussions allowed me to see the importance of rhetoric and how it’s used. In the last part of the semester, I got to choose a topic that I found important to write about and explore the different ways research and purpose can help successfully deliver the message that I wanted to give.

As a writer, my first instinct when beginning an essay or a paper was to go for the good old ‘introduction, three body paragraphs, and conclusion’ format. Although valid and very useful at times, when diving into genres of music or literacy analysis, this format becomes too simple and repetitive. When I wrote about topics in the art category, I realized that I had to format my writing in ways that would catch the attention of the audience and keep them attentive. In my writing, I knew I had to describe things such as paintings in ways that an artist or someone interested in visual arts would appreciate my words and would be intrigued by what I was saying. Paper after paper, I also learned to revised carefully my writing, so I wouldn’t overwrite on topics and leave grammatical errors.

In class discussions, I learned to see that the both sides of a story matter. Although I knew this from before as not presenting yourself as bias, with our class discussions, I learned to analyze situations and opinions about the same thing more in depth and make conclusions after reviewing the different scenarios. For example, when given the opportunity to learn about a music genre that interested me, I learned not to let my pass knowledge on the subject lead my paper. Trap music, the genre that I wrote about, is one that I know inside and out. When writing the paper, I allowed myself to learn even more about it and ended up finding out a lot more.  The same can be said with my experience with research about my topic on DACA. I chose the topic because it is something that is being talked about constantly but it’s not being resolved. When I learned more about what it is and what stories it carries, it gave me a newer perspective of how it can be solved and the complications it carries. Although I am still not a perfect writer, especially in the grammar side, I’ve improved in my grammar over the last semester and have gained a great deal of knowledge in writing and the humanities.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication license.

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1.13: Assignment- Essay Reflection

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Now that you have completed your essay, take a few minutes to reflect on the experience.

Assignment Instructions

• What was most the challenging aspect of creating this essay?
• What did you learn about yourself as a writer?
• What might you do differently the next time you write this type of essay knowing what you know now after writing this essay?
• 250-500 words, 12 pt font size, Times New Roman;
• Submitted as either a .doc, .docx, .rtf file.
• Submit your reflections as a single file upload.

Contributors and Attributions

• Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Daryl Smith O' Hare and Susan C. Hines. Provided by : Chadron State College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Paul Powell. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution

Essay on Humanity

500 words essay on humanity.

When we say humanity, we can look at it from a lot of different perspectives. One of the most common ways of understanding is that it is a value of kindness and compassion towards other beings. If you look back at history, you will find many acts of cruelty by humans but at the same time, there are also numerous acts of humanity. An essay on humanity will take us through its meaning and importance.

Importance of Humanity

As humans are progressing as a human race into the future, the true essence of humanity is being corrupted slowly. It is essential to remember that the acts of humanity must not have any kind of personal gain behind them like fame, money or power.

The world we live in today is divided by borders but the reach we can have is limitless. We are lucky enough to have the freedom to travel anywhere and experience anything we wish for. A lot of nations fight constantly to acquire land which results in the loss of many innocent lives.

Similarly, other humanitarian crisis like the ones in Yemen, Syria, Myanmar and more costs the lives of more than millions of people. The situation is not resolving anytime soon, thus we need humanity for this.

Most importantly, humanity does not just limit to humans but also caring for the environment and every living being. We must all come together to show true humanity and help out other humans, animals and our environment to heal and prosper.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

The Great Humanitarians

There are many great humanitarians who live among us and also in history. To name a few, we had Mother Teresa , Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Princess Diana and more. These are just a few of the names which almost everyone knows.

Mother Teresa was a woman who devoted her entire life to serving the poor and needy from a nation. Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian poet who truly believed in humanity and considered it his true religion.

Similarly, Nelson Mandela was a great humanitarian who worked all his life for those in needs. He never discriminated against any person on the basis of colour, sex, creed or anything.

Further, Mahatma Gandhi serves as a great example of devoting his life to free his country and serve his fellow countrymen. He died serving the country and working for the betterment of his nation. Thus, we must all take inspiration from such great people.

The acts and ways of these great humanitarians serve as a great example for us now to do better in our life. We must all indulge in acts of giving back and coming to help those in need. All in all, humanity arises from selfless acts of compassion.

Conclusion of the Essay on Humanity

As technology and capitalism are evolving at a faster rate in this era, we must all spread humanity wherever possible. When we start practising humanity, we can tackle many big problems like global warming, pollution , extinction of animals and more.

FAQ of Essay on Humanity

Question 1: What is the importance of humanity?

Answer 1: Humanity refers to caring for and helping others whenever and wherever possible. It means helping others at times when they need that help the most. It is important as it helps us forget our selfish interests at times when others need our help.

Question 2: How do we show humanity?

Answer 2: All of us are capable of showing humanity. It can be through acknowledging that human beings are equal, regardless of gender, sex, skin colour or anything. We must all model genuine empathy and show gratitude to each other and express respect and humility.

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Recent news, howard stein, acclaimed uchicago philosopher and historian of physics, 1929‒2024.

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The following was published in UChicago News on March 27, 2024.

By Sara Patterson

Prof. Emeritus Howard Stein, a renowned philosopher and historian of physics at the University of Chicago, died March 8 at his home in Hyde Park. He was 95.

A trained philosopher and mathematician, Stein was a longtime faculty member of the Department of Philosophy and the Committee on the Conceptual Foundations of Science. Colleagues recalled Stein’s curiosity about physics, the elegance of his writing, and his impact on our understanding of the history of philosophy and physics. 

According to Thomas Pashby, assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at UChicago, Stein inaugurated the modern study of the foundation of physics in 1967 with his article “Newtonian Space-Time,” published in The Texas Quarterly .

“Philosophers of science had been often concerned with physical theories before, but Stein’s mathematical, historical and conceptual analysis of Newtonian and, in 1968, Einstein-Minkowski spacetime using modern geometry set a new standard of scholarship,” Pashby said. “By the 1990s, there was a thriving community of self-identified philosophers of physics concerned with the problems and approaches to physical theory that Stein had originated in the 1960s. Stein was remarkable among them for his equal dedication to the history of philosophy and to the history of physics, and his compelling writing style. Each paper he wrote changed the way we think about science and philosophy.”

Stein’s work on the philosophy of physics and on the philosophy of mathematics ranged from antiquity to the present. For his scholarship on ancient physics and mathematics,, his papers “Comments on ‘The Thesis of Parmenides’” in the Review of Metaphysics (1969) and “Eudoxos and Dedekind: On the Ancient Greek Theory of Ratios and Its Relation to Modern Mathematics” published in Synthese (1990) exemplified his historical and philosophical perspectives. On contemporary issues, Stein’s noteworthy papers included “A Problem in Hilbert Space Theory Arising from the Quantum Theory of Measurement” in the American Mathematical Monthly (1979), “On the Present State of the Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics” in PSA (1982), and “On Quantum Nonlocality, Special Relativity, and Counterfactual Reasoning” cowritten with Abner Shimony in Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics (2003).

“Apart from his seminal writings on the foundations and history of physics, especially Newton, and history of philosophy from Parmenides to Carnap, there was Howard’s amazing breadth of knowledge of everything—from the Greeks to Milton to contemporary politics to music and its history—and his brute intelligence,” said Josef Stern, the William H. Colvin Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at UChicago.

“This intelligence, his ability to listen, absorb, and then, simply out of deep determination to understand what was being said, and then to raise the most probing critical questions—this character trait was most manifest in his questions at colloquia. Howard’s questions were never clever ‘objections,’ but rather an expression of his commitment simply to comprehend and to know. No topic lay beyond his curiosity and no opinion, text, or communication—from colleague’s writings to student questions to menus to Times editorials—were beneath his critical reflection.”

David Malament, distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine, added: “Some philosophers are scholars, steeped in the close reading of historical texts. Some do work that overlaps with that done by mathematicians and physicists. Some have a kind of special philosophical intelligence that allows them to hear a talk on almost any subject and then ask exactly the right question that gets to the heart of the matter. All these things could be said about Howard.”

Stein was known for a special kind of philosophical intelligence. He could listen to a colloquium talk on almost any subject and then ask exactly the right question that got to the heart of the matter, according to Malament.

Intellectual beginnings

Stein was born on Jan. 21, 1929, in Laurelton, N.Y. From the start, he was academically focused, earning his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University at the age of 18. Stein headed to the University of Chicago for his doctorate in philosophy, graduating in 1958, and then obtained his master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1959. While at UChicago, Stein studied with Rudolf Carnap, one of the best-known philosophers in UChicago’s history.

His teaching career in the natural sciences began at the UChicago in 1949 and continued through 1960. During this time, he worked within the “Great Books” framework and became knowledgeable about Galileo Galilei’s Two Dialogues , Isaac Newton’s Principia , and various works by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christiaan Huygens. The close study of these works influenced his entire career, according to André Carus, Stein’s former student. From 1959 to 1962, he became an instructor in Mathematics at Brandeis University.

In 1962, Stein’s career briefly pivoted from academics to positions in mathematics and engineering at Honeywell. When he returned to teaching in 1967, he become a professor of philosophy at Case Western Reserve University and then at Columbia University until 1980. For the rest of teaching career, starting in 1980 to his retirement in 2000, Stein returned to UChicago as a professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Committee on the Conceptual Foundations of Science.

Stein frequently taught three-hour seminars and found it tough to end them in a timely manner. According to Eric Schliesser, a former student and now professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, students did not ask any questions in the final 30 minutes because Stein’s meticulous answers to student questions would have likely lengthened the seminars even more. He wanted to be sure his students were clear on the questions they raised. Stein always welcomed questions, especially from the remarkable undergraduates who would attend his classes.

Schliesser, wrote on his blog about Stein: “One of his lasting contributions is to teach that whatever Newton’s substantivalism might have been, it was nothing like what Leibniz and generations of metaphysicians to this today present it as. And also that Huygens and Newton saw quite deeply into the nature of relativity.”

In Malament’s book Reading Natural Philosophy: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science and Mathematics (2002), 13 leading philosophers of science focused on the work of Stein. In another tribute to Stein’s legacy, Pashby organized a conference in 2017 to bring together philosophers of physics who had been influenced by Stein, resulting in a special issue of collected papers .

When considering Plato’s intended-though-never-written sequel to Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman , which was to be called “The Philosopher,” Stein wrote: “I have long cherished the fantasy, anachronistic though it be, that in that work Socrates, questioning Aristotle, would have led him to admit that it is impossible to know whether one knows, and that if wisdom is the contrary state to wonder, then philosophy never ends.”

Among his many honors, Stein was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was a recipient of a National Science Foundation Science Faculty Fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

“Howard’s attention, thoughtfulness and love toward his children, loved ones and close friends rivaled his earlier professional zeal,” said Jeff Robison, Stein’s caregiver and principal of LincolnPark FamilyCare. “And that was what he cherished the most in his later years.”

Stein is survived by his daughter, Kathy Stein; his son, David Stein; his brother, Norman Stein and sister-in-law, Judy Stein; and his sister, Carol Berkowitz and brother-in-law, Leonard Berkowitz.