Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century

Contributions by Sarah Archino Mario J. Azevedo Katrina Byrd Rico D. Chapman Helen O. Chukwuma Tatiana Glushko Eric J. Griffin Kathi R. Griffin Yumi Park Huntington Thomas M. Kersen Robert E. Luckett Jr. Floyd W. Martin Preselfannie W. McDaniels Dawn McLin Laura Ashlee Messina Byron D'Andra Orey Kathy Root Pitts Candis Pizzetta Lawrence Sledge RaShell R. Smith-Spears Joseph Martin Stevenson Seretha D. Williams and Karen C. Wilson-Stevenson and Monica Flippin Wynn <p/> Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century delves into the essential nature of the liberal arts in America today. During a time when the STEM fields of science technology engineering and math dominate the narrative around the future of higher education the liberal arts remain vital but frequently dismissed academic pursuits. <p/> While STEAM has emerged as a popular acronym the arts get added to the discussion in a way that is often rhetorical at best. Written by scholars from a diversity of fields and institutions the essays in this collection legitimize the liberal arts and offer visions for the role of these disciplines in the modern world. From the arts pedagogy and writing to social justice the digital humanities and the African American experience the essays that comprise Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century bring attention to the vast array of ways in which the liberal arts continue to be fundamental parts of any education. <p/> In an increasingly transactional environment in which students believe a degree must lead to a specific job and set income colleges and universities should take heed of the advice from these scholars. The liberal arts do not lend themselves to the capacity to do a single job but to do any job. The effective teaching of critical and analytical thinking writing and speaking creates educated citizens. In a divisive twenty-first-century world such a citizenry holds the tools to maintain a free society redefining the liberal arts in a manner that may be key to the American republic.