Issue 8 · Spring 2023

The Future of the Humanities

From STEM to STEAM

A Modest Proposal

Ming Dong Gu 

Today, the dwindling enrollment of literature majors in colleges and schools and the diminishing interest in reading literary works in society are a widely recognized fact, if not around the globe, at least in the U.S. In most universities and colleges, literary studies across the country are struggling to survive in the age of digital revolution by eking out their existence on the fulfillment of literary requirements for general education. And most people in society today are likely to read almost anything on iPhone, iPad, and internet but literary works, be it poetry, fiction, or drama. There are tell-tale signs and statistical evidence to confirm that literature as a topic for readings is dying out in ordinary people’s life, and literary studies are becoming increasingly marginalized by the growing dominance of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects in schools and colleges. In an increasing number of schools and colleges across the globe, students take courses in literature not because they enjoy reading literary works, but because they are required to take a certain number of literature courses before they can graduate and obtain their educational degrees.

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This article appears in Athenaeum Review Issue 8 (Spring 2023), pp. 36-44. Download a PDF copy.