Interview with Dr. Richard Leppert: Importance of the Humanities Ashar Foley and Teresa Moore
AEGIS: From your experience teaching the humanities, what do you feel is their importance to current college-age students and to the college atmosphere itself? LEPPERT: College may constitute the last time in your life when you can dedicate concentrated time to the broad topics associated with liberal education, unless [you] go on to some other kind of professional training or graduate school. In terms of what the humanities offer people at that time of life, it is largely a matter of trying to understand some things about how the world works. It’s a way of coming to terms with the way that individuals come to be [how] they are (for better or worse); the way that societies get constructed; the way that differences in race, class, gender, age, religious belief, and political belief get formed and play out in society. The humanities are certainly not the only forms of inquiry that address these questions. After all, that goes on in the social sciences in particular as well. I think it boils down to a way of learning about yourself and learning about the world you live in and, as we all know, that kind of knowledge is crucial for being able to function. Higher education in general, and especially in the humanities and social sciences, help us [to] responsible citizenship, or at least it gives people the opportunity to understand issues of politics, ethics, morality, and so
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LEPPERT: Well, there are a couple things. With regard to the first part of the question, I think the connections that I trace among art, music and literature relate to the way I study them as a part of their shared cultural milieu. In other words, if I’m looking at something from Twentieth Century American culture, a work of literature, some music and an artwork, certainly the most obvious thing each has in common with the others is their cultural frame, namely Twentieth Century America. At the same time—and this gets back to the second part of your question—while American art, literature and music share the same cultural frame, they are of course separate practices that have something unique about each of them. The way that a writer, a poet or a novelist, say, addresses a cultural question is not the same as how a visual artist or a musician would. So, the specific differences between those discursive forms have to be respected.
leppert
AEGIS: We understand that you study and teach multiple divisions of the humanities: music, literature, and art. How do these divisions inform one another? Do you feel as though they are different aspects of one identity or all to be approached in different manners?
aegis 2004
This year, Aegis had the opportunity to hold an interview with Otterbein College’s visiting Humanities Scholar, Dr. Richard Leppert. We were interested to know about his views regarding the academic importance, non-academic influence, status, and flexibility of the humanities.
