John Donne Goes to the Movies: How the HBO Film Wit Helps Us Reflect on the Practice of the Humanities as a Healing Art

Most of us who teach in the humanities often feel backed into a corner by an increasingly materialistic, anti-intellectual culture that keeps asking what’s the cash value of a degree in the humanities.  I want to shift the conversation to something more important than jobs and careers.  To do this, we’ll need to view and discuss some scenes from the HBO movie Wit, which suggest to me that it is a matter of life and death not just how we study or profess but also how we practice the humanities, which I propose we begin to think about as a set of healing arts.