The Humanities

[Nora Favorov]

Thanks to everyone (Vlado, Darya, Valery, Genevra, Loren, John, and Charlotte) who responded to my query about the humanities/gumanitar'nye nauki). It seems the question I was posing was even more difficult than I realized. I am now inclined to think that Russia's gumanitar'nye nauki are indeed closer to our "social sciences" than to what we (in the US) usually call "the humanities," as in Russia they tend to include psychology, economics, political science, etc. (yes, Vlado, the RGGU web site was helpful).  And it seems that Russians do not consider the study of khudozhestvennaia literatura to come under the humanities--is that really the case?--while western tradition would definitely include "the fine arts and literature."  

I particularly appreciated Loren Billing's pointing to the historical reasons for economics and philosophy becoming confused and intermingled under Communism and John Dunn's contribution of the Scottish perspective, including his point that the English-speaking world is extremely inconsistent in its usage of education-related terminology. 

The matter does not seem to be quite resolved (and attempting to do so may be one of those "nailing jello to the wall" exercises), but I'd still appreciate hearing from anyone with more to say on the subject, on or off list.

Cheers!
Nora

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Nora Seligman Favorov
100 Village Lane
Chapel Hill, NC  27514

Tel:  919-960-6871
Fax  919-969-6628

ATA Certified for Russian to English since 1991
Reply to:  norafavorov at bellsouth.net

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