Liberal Humanism (9-11-07)

I'm glad that we read about liberal humanism at the very beginning of our class, because I don't really like it and I don't want to deal with it again. I can see why English was at first taught as an academic subject through the "lens" of liberal humanism, but you can really only go so far with that mindset. Teaching English without applying any kinds of theories (though technically liberal humanism is in fact a theory in its own right) or taking into consideration historical context and knowledge of the author(s) is like purposefully blinding yourself from the full meaning of a text. There is so much a person can gain from looking at a text from many different perspectives; I'd like to think that that's kind of why we're here (at Emmanuel).