Synopses & Reviews
The New Humanities Reader is the cross-disciplinary anthology for first-year composition that has revolutionized the esteemed writing program at Rutgers University. This text requires students to make connections for themselves as they think, read, and write. Thousands of students have class tested the new humanities approach responded with more reflective and interesting papers.
Designed to help students attain the analytical skills and big-picture overview necessary to become informed citizens, the collection contains challenging and important readings from diverse fields that address critical issues in contemporary society. Ideas and research from wide-ranging sources provide opportunities for students to synthesize materials and come up with their own ideas and solutions.The 32 high-interest selections are drawn from well-known nonfiction trade books, newly published writers, and periodicals, and selections address such global issues as the population explosion, a diminishing water supply, and racial inequities.The New Humanities Web Site for students features more information on each author and his or her areas of interest, hot links to related sites, sample student papers, advice on protecting against plagiarism, grading criteria, and moreThe New Humanities Web Site for instructors provides numerous sample assignments and assignment sequences submitted by users of the text, professional issue essays by the authors, essays on how to use text, and more.
Synopsis
The New Humanities Reader presents 32 challenging and important essays from diverse fields that address current global issues. The authors contend that there is a crisis within the humanities today due to specialization within narrow fields of scholarship, resulting in a higher education system that produces students who lack the general cross-disciplinary knowledge needed to better understand today's complex world. The selections encourage students to synthesize and think critically about ideas and research formerly kept apart. This approach challenges readers to resist mimetic thinking and instead creatively connect ideas to help them understand and retain what they read. Through this process of reading, discussing, and writing, students develop the analytical skills necessary to become informed citizens. Focused on today's issues, the selections represent both well-known nonfiction authors and newly published writers and are drawn from such periodicals as The New Yorker and Natural History and from best-selling books including Reading Lolita in Tehran, Fast Food Nation, and Into the Wild. Students will be engaged by reading and rereading, analyzing and working with these selections not simply because they are models of good writing, but because they are also deeply thought-provoking pieces that invite readers to respond.
Table of Contents
Abram, David. "The Ecology of Magic" Abu-Lughod, Lila. "Honor and Shame" Armstrong, Karen. "Does God Have a Future?" Boyarin, Jonathan. "Waiting for a Jew" Chua, Amy. "A World on the Edge" Dillard, Annie. "The Wreck of Time: Taking Our Century's Measure" Faludi, Susan. "The Naked Citadel" Gertner, Jon. "The Futile Pursuit of Happiness" Gladwell, Malcolm. "The Power of Context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime" Gould, Stephen Jay. "What does the dreaded 'E' word mean anyway? A Reverie for the Opening of the New Hayden Planetarium" Greider, William. "Work Rules" Guinier, Lani. "Second Prom and Second Primaries: The Limits of Majority Rule" Johnson, Steven. "The Myth of the Ant Queen" Kaldor, Mary. "Beyond Militarism, Arms Races, and Arms Control" Krakauer, Jon. Selections from Into the Wild Loffreda, Beth. "Selections from Losing Matt Shepherd" Nafisi, Azar. Selection from Reading Lolita in Tehran Nussbaum, Martha. "Women and Cultural Universals" O'Brien, Tim. "How to Tell a True War Story" Pollan, Michael. "Playing God in the Garden" Postrel, Virginia. "Surface and Substance" Relman, Arnold. America's Other Drug Problem: How the Drug Industry Distorts Medicine and Politics" Sacks, Oliver. "The Mind's Eye" Schlosser, Eric. "Global Realization" Scott, James C. "Behind the Official Story" Stille, Alexander. "The Ganges Next Life" Stock, Gregory. "The Enhanced and the Unenhanced" Stout, Martha. "When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday" Tannen, Deborah. "The Roots of Debate in Education and the Hope of Dialogue" Tenner, Edward. "Another Look Back, and A Look Ahead" Thurman, Robert. "Wisdom" de Waal, Frans. Selections from The Ape and Sushi Master