Public Humanities and Literary Knowledge: Four Theses on How Reading Matters

1. At the present moment, humanities (and literary/cultural studies) agendas and methodologies are needed as much as ever because they address, know, and handle things differently than the empirical sciences.

2. The humanities (and the cultural technologies of reading it develops and disseminates) and with them a wide idea of education/Bildung that encompasses but is not restricted to notions of training are acutely threatened in Europe and even more so in the US by: a) the scientization of knowledge on human action and behavior, b) neoliberal, mostly metric market rationales, and c) by defunding.

3. Trusting our own powers, the humanities need to face the threat rather than barricade in the safe spaces of our profession. Different disciplines need to join forces in solidarity and develop a common vision for our differentiated endeavors.

4. To demonstrate how reading matters, i.e. how humanities’ methodologies are indispensible contributions to a well-informed critical history of the present geopolitical moment, its necessities and possibilities, communication is key. Scholars working in the humanities today need to develop vocabularies, formats and forms of address that help us overcome the “privacy bias” (Russel A. Berman) and to make our work, our assumptions and our overall vision materially and semantically accessible, publicly tangible and persuasive.

Antje Kley is Chair of American Studies at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. She is the author of Ethik medialer Repräsentation im britischen und US-amerikanischen Roman, 1741 – 2000 and Das erlesene Selbst: Zu Politik und Poetik der Selbstreflexion bei Roth, Delany, Lorde und Kingston. Aside from her work in fields such as literature and knowledge, U.S. literary history, and the literatures of the Anglophone Caribbean, Antje has also served in a variety of academic and administrative functions, most recently as University vice president responsible for teaching.