Last Week we published the first in a series of Columns by Katharina Donn, a post-doctoral researcher on the role of the humanities in our lives. Below Katharina gives a brief series rationale.

When I tell people I am a researcher in contemporary literature, the response often conveys a certain bemused confusion. What do professionals in the humanities actually do? And more importantly, why?

This series of articles showcases some of the most cutting-edge topics in current humanities research, and uses them as tools of critique for exploring the present. The humanities inspire and shape our day-to-day lives, and deal with some of the most central questions facing us today: What does it mean to be human? How can we understand our relation to the environment, to our history, to questions of identity or language, ethics or religion, economies?

There is a twist to this, though. I believe that the arts and literature – or in other words, the ‘aesthetic sphere’ has a privileged position in this. As Marc Redfield recently put it, aesthetics “discovers the essence of humanity in our ability to play freely”. In consequence, this is also a question about the nature of arts and literature in our society, and goes to the heart of what Litro is about.

About Katharina Donn

Katharina Donn’s first book, A Poetics of Trauma after 9/11", has been published by Routledge in 2016. She works internationally, between Germany and London, and is employed as associate lecturer and post-doctoral research fellow at the American Studies Department at the University of Augsburg. She has also held positions with the University of Texas at Austin and with the Institute of Advanced Studies at UCL. She enjoys being a transnational traveller, commuting between Germany and the UK, and works with the Brilliant Club at London state schools to advocate equality in education.

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Humanities Critique Series Rationale