The Public Value of the Humanities [Hardcover]

Recession is a time for asking fundamental questions about value. At a time when governments are being forced to make swingeing savings in public expenditure, why should they continue to invest public money funding research into ancient Greek tragedy, literary value, philosophical conundrums or the aesthetics of design? Does such research deliver 'value for money' and 'public benefit'? Such questions have become especially pertinent in the UK in recent years, in the context of the drive by government to instrumentalize research across the disciplines and the prominence of discussions about 'economic impact' and 'knowledge transfer'.

In this book a group of distinguished humanities researchers, all working in Britain, but publishing research of international importance, reflect on the public value of their discipline, using particular research projects as case-studies. Their essays are passionate, sometimes polemical, often witty and consistently thought-provoking, covering a range of humanities disciplines from theology to architecture and from media studies to anthropology.

???This book provides a top-notch tutorial on the current states of humanities research... The Shakespeare scholar, Jonathan Bate, has imaginatively arranged 24 essays...Beautifully written.... These short essays approach the core question of value from the different vantage points expected of the different disciplines or disciplinary amalgams. Some start from the polarities of intrinsic and instrumental, others with a more practical social or lessons learned approach. Virtually no one seriously takes on the case for economic value, and only a few look at the question from the perspective of employability: what do trained humanists actually do in life, and how does that add value???? ???The Times Higher Education (UK)

Jonathan Bate is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick, a Fellow of the British Academy and a Governor of the Royalƒ&