Alfred Romero
1/20/2023
Professor Frank
Liberal Learning 420
Journal #1
Part 1:
To start off with this post, I’d like to first mention that I’m not a student who’s major lies within the arts and humanities. I’m rather a student who majors in medical biology, specifically on the pre-medicine track. So, how would someone like me, who’s specialty lies outside of the contents of this class, come to define what the humanities are? To anybody similar to me, in the sense of being an outsider to this area, I’d first describe a technical definition of the humanities. A simplified version of how I see the humanities can relate to the literal area description of itself. The humanities, in a simplified version, can be described as an area of study that focuses on subjects like the fine arts, English (which also happens to be my minor), history, philosophy, and many other disciplines. But in a deeper sense, I like to differentiate between the humanities and other disciplines through this sort of relationship that I can’t define. The best way that I could describe it, is that the humanities give other subjects life. As a medical biology student, I live in a world of facts. While there may be theories here and there, everything I learn from my classes follows a very mechanistic way of thinking. What the humanities offers outside of that thought process is perspective. Science focuses on what’s there, why things happen, how they happen, but the humanities can take that knowledge and apply it to who’s being affected, concepts like culture, and ultimately just what it really means to be human. During describes this idea of perspective well by mentioning that “inside the humanities world one doesn’t see clear boundaries” (During 1). I also like his idea of how “the humanities also produce not truths but interpretations” (During 5). While humanities can give life to other subjects, that life given to it can come from a multitude of different perspectives with each one thinking their own to be the truth. Bod in his article also supports this “giving of life” concept in a way, where he mentions that the humanities “can refer both to the study of the products of the human mind and to those products themselves” (Bod et al. 4). However, the next sentence appears a bit muddy to me. I guess I just might be confused on how it’s worded out. How could one not include historical studies of a discipline when the aim is at the history of those studies? I feel like discussing this and what the humanities could or couldn’t be would be beneficial for class discussion.
Part 2:
So, my basic understanding of these two articles is that they’re both focused on what exactly can be defined within the world of the humanities? What are the humanities? How can we define it? What aren’t humanities? These are the questions I feel that the authors of the two texts aim to answer. During answers the definition of the humanities by referring to thinking “about them historically – to tell their story” (During 7). I feel as if this quote can be related to the muddy sentence I found in the Bod article, where the study isn’t so much focused on the analysis of the actual disciplines themselves, but rather on the history of how such subjects were analyzed.
