Alif 40: Mapping New Directions in the Humanities

This issue of Alif is dedicated to efforts to redefine and reorient the humanities in light of global institutional and intellectual realities. “Mapping” is construed in several ways: the more literal meaning of geographical “reorientation” in the sense of efforts to redefine the relationship between global north and south, and between Western and non-Western intellectual traditions. It also refers to the remapping of the modern university by interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work in the humanities that brings it to new shores such as the digital humanities and medical humanities. Essays map out ways for the humanities to better engage the extra-academic pressures shaping the modern university as it remains true to its own best long-standing goals and values.