Deliberate Forgetting at Australian Catholic University

A fundamental principle of the Genealogies of Modernity project is that the past is always with us, whether we acknowledge it or not. It is a chief responsibility of the humanities to remember and interpret the past so that we can understand the present. This past week, Australian Catholic University proposed a program of institutional forgetting that is unprecedented in its scale: among other drastic faculty and curricular cuts, it will eliminate all study of medieval and early modern material. 

That a Catholic university should outdo its secular peers in the race to the instrumentalist bottom of higher education is an irony best anatomized elsewhere. This is a time for humanists of every stripe (and post-humanists, if you must) to speak out and support the faculty, students, and curriculum under threat at ACU. As we understand it, there is still time for the proposal to be revised or rescinded. 

Please consider signing this petition circulated by ACU faculty: https://linkmix.co/18729853 

As one GenMod collaborator and current ACU faculty said: “Gondor calls for aid!”

–Ryan McDermott