{"id":2289,"date":"2025-01-12T22:16:50","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T03:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.golive.clarku.edu\/?p=2289"},"modified":"2025-04-18T13:54:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T17:54:18","slug":"humanities-and-the-good-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/research-highlights\/humanities-and-the-good-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanities and the \u2018good life\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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If you ask English Professor Betsy Huang about the future of humanity and the humanities, which face disruption from seemingly unmitigable forces such as climate change and artificial intelligence, she will direct you to pragmatic visions of hope and eye-opening messages of caution offered by contemporary speculative fiction writers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Betsy<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cIt is very important to study all things that make us human.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huang<\/a> says speculative fiction, like Octavia Butler\u2019s dystopian Parable\u202fseries, helps to make meaning of it all \u201cby forcing us to take stock of what we find valuable in our everyday life.\u201d Likewise, studying the humanities brings people face to face with questions about \u201cthe pursuit of the good life, and what that good life means,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this age of AI and other emerging technologies, speculative fiction also raises questions about what it means to be human and to be alive, she says. To better understand those who embrace \u201ctechnology as the solution to everything,\u201d Huang took a class on AI through MIT\u2019s Sloan School of Management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was missing from classroom discussions, she says, was something that she believes Clark can introduce into its liberal arts curriculum: \u201cThe overarching philosophical and existential questions about what AI is really going to mean for the human race.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe humanities provide a person with the vocabularies they need to make sense of their experience in the world in all its dimensions, to be able to articulate it, and to feel that they are creating their own experience and value rather than simply receiving it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt is very important to study all things that make us human, but it\u2019s also in the act and in the performance of our humanity that truly reminds us of who we are in this world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Department of English<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Humanity and the humanities face disruption from seemingly unmitigable forces such as climate change and artificial intelligence. 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