Dr. Peter Tokofsky, from the J. Paul Getty Museum, will speak on “Applied Humanities: Revisiting the Divide” on Thursday, January 17, at 4 p.m. in Knight Library’s Browsing Room.

Economic and employment realities are prompting some leading humanities programs to reconsider the training of graduate students with a goal of preparing them for a variety of employment options in applied humanities fields, such as museums. The debate between “pure” humanities and “life beyond the tenure track” has dominated discussions at recent meetings of the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association, and within various other fields.

In this talk, Peter Tokofsky revisits debates over distinctions between the two spheres, which played out in disciplines such as folklore studies and art history in the 1980s and 1990s, and he reflects on current arguments from the perspective of someone whose own career straddles the academic and applied humanities divide.

Peter Tokofsky directs academic programs and the public speaker series at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Tokofsky is also adjunct associate professor of Germanic languages at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has published extensively on the history of folklore studies and carnival celebrations in German-speaking Europe. He directs UCLA’s summer travel study program to Vienna, Munich, and Berlin.

The talk is presented by the UO Folklore Program and sponsored by the Oregon Humanities Center, College of Arts and Sciences, Office of Academic Affairs, UO Libraries, Comparative Literature Program, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Humanities Program, Department of History, Arts and Administration Program, and Department of English.

Image Credit: http://edtseng.com/2012/11/message-1651-the-thinker