Former Chancellor Holden Thorp returned to campus Sunday to speak about the future of academia and keeping the humanities strong.
Thorp spoke at this year’s E. Maynard Adams Lecture on Sunday, which is organized and run by the UNC Program in the Humanities, the public outreach arm of the College of Arts and Sciences, said Interim Director for the Program in the Humanities Max Owre.
The Adams Lecture is given annually by a faculty member from the College of Arts and Sciences and focuses on the value of the humanities in higher education.
“We chose (Thorp) because of his commitment (to the humanities),” Owre said.
Owre also said the hard work Thorp put in as Chancellor to strengthen the humanities was a reason for choosing him as a speaker.
“We are delighted Holden has returned,” Owre said. “It is a testament to his character that he came back and to his intellect in that he can speak to these issues so eloquently.”
Thorp began his lecture by introducing “Death of a Salesman,” a play by Arthur Miller that criticizes materialism, and “Hamletmachine,” a postmodernist drama by Heiner Müller. He used these plays’ contrasting characteristics to emphasize how the humanities need to be more encompassing of all aspects.
“The humanities are not interpreting texts and creative works whose meanings are obvious,” he said. “The humanities are not the teaching of texts that people should have read in high school.”
The humanities are not even skills, Thorp argued — they are integrative and multi-faceted.
