Defining The Humanities

"Think of this as 'The Thinking Man's Bloom' or 'The Thinking Woman's Closing of the American Mind.' It takes up debates about education and reasons about them, where Bloom often only blasted away.... This is one of the more helpful recent statements of the case for the classics, accompanied by rather venturesome curricular suggestions." — Christian Century

"His exciting readable book calls for a return to a study of the classics — and of the Renaissance poets and scholars, like Petrarch, who rediscovered the classics." — Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

"... a splendid statement bringing together in a careful and coherent way the prospects for a solid humanities curriculum." — Ernest L. Boyer

Ten years ago when this book was first published it was called Education's Great Amnesia: Reconsidering the Humanities from Petrarch to Freud. It is being reissued now in a second edition with a different title for a new generation of readers who cannot have forgotten what they never knew. What are the humanities? Can we agree on a core curriculum of humanistic studies? Robert Proctor answers these questions in a provocative, readable book.

Michael Dirda

His exciting readable book calls for a return to a study of the classics -- and of the Renaissance poets and scholars, like Petrarch, who rediscovered the classics. -- Washington Post Book World

Robert E. Proctor is Professor of Italian at Connecticut College, where he has also served as Provost and Dean of the Faculty, and as Founding Director of the Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts. He has been a Fellow of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, and of the National Humanities Institute at Yale University.