The New Humanities Reader: Student Text

"The New Humanities Reader" is a cross-disciplinary anthology for first-year composition designed to help readers attain the analytical skills necessary to become informed citizens. The collection contains challenging and important readings from diverse fields that address critical issues in contemporary society. The authors contend that there is a crisis within the humanities today due to specialisation within narrow fields of knowledge, resulting in a higher education system that produces students who lack the general cross-disciplinary knowledge necessary to become engaged students and informed citizens. Ideas and research from wide-ranging sources provide opportunities for students to synthesise materials and formulate their own ideas and solutions. Students will be engaged by reading and rereading, analysing and working with these selections because they are thought-provoking, not simply because they are models of good writing.