Author: Andrew Appleton Pine

Like many humanists, when I graduated with my bachelor’s in English, I started searching for a way to justify my choice to pursue the humanities. Sure, I’ve developed “habits of mind” such as “openness” and “creativity,” a couple of the more “marketable” qualities I developed from my minor in writing studies—qualities that are as undoubtedly as important as they are problematically vague. Yet, in the conceptually opaque value system of a humanities education, it seems that empathy reigns supreme. Now, many years later, as an instructor in a college of liberal arts, I’m encouraged to pass on what I’ve learned to my students,…