Are the Humanities in Crisis? A panel discussion with Chad Wellmon and Zena Hitz, moderated by Jennifer Frey.

Jennifer Frey is an associate Professor of Philosophy and Peter and Bonnie McCausland Fellow at the University of South Carolina, as well as a fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. She has published widely on action, virtue, practical reason, and meta-ethics. Her writing has also been featured in Breaking Ground, First Things, Fare Forward, Image, Law and Liberty, The Point, and USA Today. She lives in Columbia, SC, with her husband, six children, and six chickens.

Zena Hitz is a Tutor at St. John’s College and founder and president of the Catherine Project (www.catherineproject.org).  Trained as a scholar in classical philosophy, her 2020 book, Lost In Thought, has been widely discussed, including in the Wall St. Journal, Chicago Tribune, Commonweal, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.   Her essays in defense of learning for its own sake have appeared in New Statesman, Modern Age, The Chronicle Review, The Tablet (UK), and the Washington Post.

Chad Wellmon is Professor of German Studies, with appointments in History and Media Studies, at the University of Virginia, where he teaches and writes about the history of knowledge and information, the history of technology and universities, and media and social theory. He has written or edited books on the history of anthropology, the modern research university, the history of reading and print, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Max Weber. His most recent book is Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age. He is currently finishing a book titled After the University.