“If the humanities are to be truly inclusive, it’s not enough to study previously marginalized and exploited groups within Western societies. It’s imperative to ensure that the humanities’ subject matter become more explicitly international and cross-cultural.
The future of the humanities is global and comparative. Propelled by demography and economic and technological interconnectedness, the humanities need to forsake Eurocentrism and national insularity and adopt a more international, cross-cultural perspective that focuses on differences and similarities within and across cultures and regions.
So argues Wiebke Denecke, the German, Chinese, Danish, Hungarian, Japanese and U.S.-trained professor of literature at MIT, in a recently published essay that deserves far greater attention than it has received.”
