VCU news

By Dina Weinstein

In a modern era marked by unyielding viewpoints and money-first mindsets, the humanities offer valuable lessons that stand the test of time – and that may never be more important, one of the field’s leaders said this week.

Paula Krebs, Ph.D., the executive director of the Modern Language Association, delivered the keynote address Monday to kick off VCU’s first Humanities Week, a slate of programs from Virginia Commonwealth University’s Humanities Research Center.

“It’s not just the members of special research projects or even humanities majors who benefit from working in the humanities,” Krebs said in her keynote address, titled “Why Humanities? Why Now?”

She noted how “humanities thinking” – a framework for interpretative, reflective and analytical approaches – shapes our understanding of the past and our vision for the present and the future. According to Krebs, humanistic thinking fosters “the ability to construct and weigh arguments, the ability to change your mind based on evidence, the ability to examine deeply conflicting points of view without defaulting to the one that hews most closely to that you grew up with.”      

She acknowledged that at many universities, the humanities are being overshadowed by – and losing resources to – STEM disciplines, but she challenged the trend. Krebs emphasized that a humanities-based education teaches subtlety, ambiguity and nuance as concepts, which allow students to more fully examine the world around them.

“The humanities are building blocks for careers and lives. They are not credentials for a first job,” she said. “It’s curious that the tide has turned so much to expect [college] majors to be that. And that’s what we’re pushing back against.”

Krebs cited data that the average salary for an undergraduate humanities degree holder was $2,000 a year higher than for some graduates with science-related degrees. In addition to calling for more federal funding for the humanities, she urged VCU faculty and staff to strongly promote their value.

“We know they teach skills – research, writing, evaluating sources, making and critiquing arguments – and also learning frameworks, skills, values and perspectives,” Krebs said.

In noting how the humanities encourage connections across disciplines, she cited examples that include a professor in New Jersey – an expert in abolition, sugar and ceramics in the late-18th and 19th centuries – who became a sought-after, authoritative source in media coverage of the popular Netflix streaming series “Bridgerton.”

Krebs also highlighted how universities are melding the humanities with STEM to give context to those fields – and the Humanities Week lineup at VCU included a Thursday program on that common ground in the history of technology.

Ahead of Krebs’ address, Cristina Stanciu, Ph.D., director of the Humanities Research Center and professor in the Department of English, recounted efforts by College of Humanities and Sciences Dean Catherine Ingrassia, Ph.D., to launch and maintain the center, which marks its 10th anniversary this year as a hub for humanities research at VCU and the Greater Richmond area. The center achieved status as a universitywide center in 2022, and it has launched eight humanities labs for interdisciplinary research in areas such as health, the environment, memory studies, artificial intelligence and graphic narratives.

Closing Monday’s event, Fotis Sotiropoulos, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, noted how the humanities can guide society now, including in his field of engineering and the sciences. He cited the growing prominence of artificial intelligence and its connection to ethics– and the importance of reimagining a humanities education to ensure that students learn not only to observe the changes brought by AI but to actively shape them so that “we approach technological progress with a focus on ethics, societal well-being and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.”

He emphasized that humanities education fosters critical thinking skills that are fundamental for personal growth and the health and prosperity of society.

“We owe it to our society, and our democracy as a whole, to be able to have the courage – and teach our students to have the courage – to think about the facts and critically develop their own opinions,” Sotiropoulos said. “Not to teach them what to think, but to teach them to have the courage to approach the world in a way that they can develop their own understanding that is based on a scientific understanding of the world.”

To conclude Humanities Week at VCU, a Reception and Roundtable on Friday will feature Matthew Gibson, executive director of Virginia Humanities, joining Stanciu, Ingrassia and others to reflect on the state of the humanities and the role of the Humanities Research Center in guiding the future of the humanities at VCU and throughout the state.