Journal #3: Your annotations and work in Journal #2 lay the groundwork for this activity, so this is a short one. Focus on “Projects” (p. 25) in Harris and write a paragraph that “expresses your understanding of [During’s] project.” Harris wants you to paraphrase and use at least one direct quotation. Makes sense. If you choose to read During’s other article (linked above), consider finding a passage from it to make a text-text connection between the two pieces, and/or use the second piece to note differences between the two projects: how does reading the second article clarify what he’s trying to do in the first?

Response:

The article by Simon During was written to explore and examine the historical background behind the modern humanities as well as defining what they are. Along the way During brings in various other authors and scholarly works that he refers to in order to support what he is saying. The humanities have been categorized in the past as separate disciplines that may or may not overlap each other. In more modern times these separate disciplines are forming to become one “meta-discipline”. Whether or not this is considered a good or bad thing in During’s eyes is what he explains throughout the article. He supports the historical ideas of what the humanities were and are today, but he comes to a conclusion that some of those ideas have limited the humanities. He concludes that no matter where in the world you are, the humanities are an integral part of society inside and outside the university. He describes the group of disciplines as the global humanities. A quote from his article that works to support this claim is at the end of the article where he states: “…the French or the Germans- don’t quite have a “humanities” in the Anglophone sense. The have their own, cognate formations with different names, regimes, and meanings. This needs to be emphasized because it means that the Anglophone humanities world has living alternatives that…draw sustenance from the same archive as they do.” During meaning that people may refer to the humanities differently but they all have a similar set of meanings.