Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in German Studies
Episode: Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon, "Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
Description: The humanities, considered by many as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis, at the mercy of modernizing and technological forces that are driving universities towards academic pursuits that pull in grant money and direct students to lucrative careers. But as Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon show in Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age (U Chicago Press, 2021), this crisis isn’t new—in fact, it’s as old as the humanities themselves.Today’s humanities scholars experience and react to basic pressures in ways that are st...