Dean of Faculty and Professor of English Joseph Urgo presented a paper at the Modern Language Association Convention in Chicago on Dec. 29. He presented a paper titled "Counting to One is Not Not Counting" in the session, Quantifying Higher Education: Making Arguments for the Humanities in Response to the Spellings Commission.
In his paper Urgo argues that because the humanities focuses so often on the single, articulate voice, as both its authoritative reference point and as its object of education, its methodological and pedagogical practices are "not counted" in the present era's reliance on quantifiable data. Humanists, as a result, are challenged to re-articulate the function of the individual voice to teaching and scholarship, and to devise ways in which their work may reclaim its central place in liberal education.
