Genealogies of the Humanities: A Vision for the Field

Abstract

What are the humanities? As essentialist answers to this question are losing credibility, historians may help elucidate what the humanities are by offering genealogical accounts of how the ideals, practices, and institutions currently known as the humanities have come into being. This article points out why such a genealogical project is important and how it might serve as a collective aspiration for the emerging field of the history of the humanities. Specifically, the essay describes the project as driven by a commitment to unraveling multilayered legacies and path-dependent trajectories. Instead of offering unifying accounts, genealogists are attentive to diversity, disagreement, and change over time. Consequently, genealogies are well suited to explain why the humanities are made up of sometimes contradictory ideas and practices, while looking differently in Cairo or Buenos Aires than in Paris or New York.