This book asks what it means to live in a higher educational world
continuously tempered by catastrophe. Many of the resources for response
and resistance to catastrophe have long been identified by thinkers
ranging from Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James to H. G. Wells and
Emanuel Haldeman-Julius. Di Leo posits that hope and resistance are
possible if we are willing to resist a form of pessimism that already
appears to be drawing us into its arms. Catastrophe and Higher
Education argues that the future of the humanities is tied to the fate
of theory as a form of resistance to neoliberalism in higher education.
It also offers that the fate of the academy may very well be in the
hands of humanities scholars who are tasked with either rejecting theory
and philosophy in times of catastrophe--or embracing it.