Joyce L. Arriola

ABSTRACT: This paper tackles the role and contribution of the agenda for new humanities research in light of current initiatives to redefine the research agenda in Philippine universities. Specifically, it answers the following questions: What constitutes the new humanities? What is their rationale as domains of knowledge and as modes of inquiry? How do the new humanities contribute to redefining the university research agenda in the Philippine context? Lastly, how can communication studies and related fields insert themselves in the supposed updated typologies and definitions? Therefore, this paper explores the possibilities for the new humanities to balance the depersonalizing influence of the new technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and how these may be relevant to mapping new prospects for communication and media research.   Keywords: new humanities, research agenda, communication studies, domains of knowledge, modes of inquiry  Introduction In June 2019, the Asian Media Information Centre (AMIC) convened a conference entitled “Communication, Technology and New Humanism.” Held a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic started, the prevailing concern of researchers and practitioners of communication and media at that time was the widespread impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – particularly, the technologies of communication and information that it spawned – upon human society. There had been since a proposal to promote discussions on the New Humanism that could assist scholars in navigating the contours of research in the discipline. Additionally, the conference brought to light the pressing need for a new world communication order that will revitalize traditional or classical humanism if a new one is not yet at hand.   Before and after the pandemic, it was established that the massive shifts in human consciousness today have been due to the major, if not the sole, contribution of technology and communication in our lives. What we once considered mere tools or media of communication became the driving force of contemporary life. They have become the major instruments of social interaction. And as they have re-ordered our way of apprehending (or even operating within this world), they have created a new episteme, a new way of knowing the world. We are at this juncture of history partly because communication and media have become so greatly revolutionized by technological advances that possess the capacity to create a new communication culture.  Perhaps the oldest program of learning that came down to us from the early days of Western civilization is what is now collectively called the Humanities. We traditionally associate it with the old program of studies offered when the first universities were established in Medieval Europe. Universities such as the University of Bologna, University of Paris, University of Oxford, and University of Salamanca were the first to offer what was called the Classical A.B. or Bachelor of Arts, which was designed to educate those who would like to pursue higher studies of theology and the wealthy class who would like to attain higher learning during the Middle Ages. The medieval university curriculum consisted initially of the curriculum called the trivium, which consisted of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. If we examine trivium closely, we can say that the subjects are ordered for teaching competence in communication. This curriculum constituted the core components of what we refer to today as the communication discipline. Eventually, the trivium expanded to become quadrivium or the subjects pertaining to music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, which, like the trivium, are actually “languages” that were utilized in the Middle Ages to acquire higher forms of knowledge. The core of Medieval university education was learning the “languages” needed for higher learning. This early emphasis on languages will be foundational to the communication discipline.  The traditional or classical humanities are, true to their name, consisting of foundational knowledge that allows the learner to understand the complexities of personal life and social and political institutions around him/her. Ellie Chambers (2001) further describes traditional/classical humanism as follows:  Traditionally, the avowed aim of humanities study has been to prepare people to participate in social and political life as knowledgeable, impartial, and tolerant individuals …They encouraged all forms of expression, especially the arts, and also the development of what were regarded as the quintessentially human attributes of reason, imagination, and aesthetic sensibility – by their very nature, ‘goods’ for society no less than for (elite) individuals. Such ideas still inform traditional quality-of-life justifications for the study of a broad arts/humanities curriculum, embracing art, classical studies, culture (including forms of social and political life), drama, history, languages, law, literature, music, philosophy, and religion. (p. 3)  Traditional or classical humanism, as intuited in the Chambers passage, is centered on reason, imagination, and aesthetics and is deeply interiorized in approach. The individual is invited to come to a self-understanding to navigate the expectations of the social world. However, it cannot be denied that classical humanism has been an individual means to social ends; it aims to examine society and its values through the lens of individual worldviews.   Communication and Humanities In so far as classical humanism is about language and expression, the earliest conception of communication as a field of study had been humanistic in emphasis. The oldest communication theory, Aristotle’s Rhetoric, concerned how an individual could produce excellent public speeches in ancient Greece. The rhetorical methods of logos (logical design), pathos (audience impact), and ethos (source credibility) are as relevant today as they were during the classical antiquity of the Greek civilization. These confer on the speaker and listener the ethical responsibility of sifting through public speeches and how they deploy argumentation and reasoning.  Through the centuries, rhetoric never really went out of fashion. In fact, recently, it has been extended into a new approach to understanding persuasive communication. Rhetoric was adopted as a core subject in the early mass communication programs and became part of the early curricula of journalism and broadcasting. Rhetoric is usually “theorized,” according to Robert Craig (1999), as a “practical art of discourse” (p. 135). He adds that Rhetoric “is useful for explaining why our participation in discourse, especially public discourse, is