Moving Forward in the Era of the Decline of Area Studies & the Humanities

For a long time now I’ve been witnessing a decline in interest in area studies, the Humanities, the field of History, etc., all of the fields that I was trained to work in.

Meanwhile, I haven’t come across many (actually, any) solid suggestions for how those fields can change to adapt to current conditions. Indeed, it is rare to find anyone even talking about the problems these fields face. . . which is itself a serious problem. . .

So for roughly the past decade I’ve found myself more or less thinking in isolation about these issues, and talking to myself about these issues.

While there are many factors that are contributing to the decline in interest in fields like History and Asian Studies, ultimately I would argue that the forces of change that globalization and the digital revolution have set in motion go the furthest in explaining why it doesn’t make sense for a young person today to choose to major in such fields.

Globalization and the rise and spread of English as the main international language has made the need for people who have a knowledge of another society’s language, culture and history much less obvious, if not less necessary.

Meanwhile, while the digital revolution has dramatically transformed how human beings communicate, fields like History and Asian Studies still require students to communicate in pre-digital-revolution ways.

This latter point has been bothering me for a long time, so I finally decided to change how I teach, so as to teach students some of the basic skills that one needs to be able to communicate online in the twenty-first century.