Why the Humanities Matter

Rowan Ricardo Phillips explores the significant role poetry, English literature and English majors play in today’s ‘fractured times’

By Ellen Cooke

In a world where language is powerful and prevalent, where the humanities compete with other seemingly more “practical” fields, and where individuals feel increasingly isolated and lonely, Rowan Ricardo Phillips believes poetry and similar forms of creative writing and expression can address some of today’s most compelling challenges.

For Phillips, a Presidential Professor and Distinguished Professor of English at Stony Brook, award-winning poet and author, “Writing is perhaps the most wonderful and righteous path that a person can choose.”

It can serve as a bridge to meaning, connection, empathy and understanding, paving a path not just to fulfillment, but also to important, necessary work in today’s “fractured times,” Phillips said.

Notably, the humanities “are key to developing humane and kind future thinkers, scholars and leaders in every field,” he added.

But Phillips doesn’t want us to rely on his opinions. A “big believer in ‘proof of concept,’” he finds plenty of proof to validate the significance of the humanities — and English literature in particular — in our classrooms and in our world.  

“Right here at Stony Brook, if you look at the litany of wonderful students we’ve had in the Department of English, and the various fields that they’ve gone on to have great success, I think that first and foremost speaks for itself,” he said.

Phillips said creative writing is a growing field and that the humanities are an important part of Stony Brook University’s legacy that will and must “continue to be at the forefront of what we do, with a clear and sustainable path forward for us as we move ahead in the 21st century.” 

 

“We continue to need to have not just an interest in, but a serious commitment to, the humanities and teaching students how to be leaders, both in the fields of literature and in the discipline of humanity. Because we study the humanities to learn how to be good citizens.”
— Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Focusing on English literature, Phillips said, “prepares you for what’s really important, which is the human touch, which I think now, more than ever, we’re looking for in terms of leadership in whatever walk of life we’re talking about. Because it’s becoming increasingly rare to be in contexts where our academic training really does what the humanities does — which is brings us together in smaller classroom settings to talk about our ideas and history of ideas and how they relate not just to who we are, but who we may grow into in the future.” 

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

According to Phillips, “One of the strongest things about English literature is that because we always need language to build and sustain bridges of communication, transaction and growth impact, it’s really important to have people who are always dealing with and thinking about the nuances of language, both in a practical sense — as it applies to nonfiction and that type of writing — but also in a creative sense, which is where we often end up affecting the minds and futures of the youth the most through various forms of literary arts.” 

For all these reasons, he claimed he’s “hard pressed when I think of the finest universities in this country, to think of many that have deprioritized greatly their commitment to the humanities,” he said. “Instead, when I think about the strongest STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math] or technical-based colleges and universities in the country, I think of them having university presses that publish leading work in literary fields and having some of the finest writers and creative writers as part of their faculty.”

Benedict Robinson, professor and chair of the Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, characterized Phillips as one of those incredible talents, and praised the contributions he’s made in the field of poetry.

“Poetry really goes to the heart of the significance of a humanities education in our moment, and I can’t think of anyone better placed to address it: a brilliant poet, who is also a brilliant critic and reader, deeply immersed in the history of poetry and the methods of poetic study as well as poetic craft,” Robinson said. “Poetry may seem like the kind of luxury we can’t afford in an era of austerity and crisis but as Phillips shows time and time again — in his writing and in his teaching — that’s exactly why we do need it: as a practice of being present to ourselves and to our world that simply is not replaceable and without which we will be diminished.”

Being Present
In his poetry, prose and nonfiction works, Phillips practices a craft he calls “enduring and evolving,” as a storyteller and a truth seeker, and as a builder of bridges between people: “a bridge made of nothing but air and syllables, yet somehow sturdier.”

In his classrooms, Phillips strives to share his craft. Most important, he connects students to each other, helping them follow their own processes and paths, supporting not only their ambitions, but also listening to questions, helping them overcome barriers, “seeing” them and understanding them, as people, first. And, in the process, have fun doing it all, together.

“Many students think the classroom is just an ‘academic space’ where they need to leave behind all the stuff that they really like, whether it’s a comic book or a certain type of music they love, or whether it’s a type of literature that they think is more kind of nonacademic and more ‘pulpy,’” he said. “One of my tenets at the beginning of the semester is to encourage students not to transform into their ‘good student selves’ but to bring all of themselves to the classroom. I encourage them to think about the classroom as being a permeable membrane — a space where we find these things we can all relate to and identify and have fun with when we are talking about literature.”

He added, “I promise my students that I will be present for them during the time we’re together. My poems can be like trespassers in my head that arrive when they will. But I tend to push those back and I don’t write as much when I’m teaching. I think that the students need that space.”

Never choosing between writing and teaching, Phillips said, he has “enough passion for both.”

Students in Phillips’ classes work on group projects and come together in mini workshops to write on the spot and connect with materials in new and different ways. “I tell students that if they love a poem, they should write it down in their notebooks, because then they’ll share in the experience that author had of having written it down. And that’s building another bridge of empathy between the writer and the reader … you’re that much closer to the moment of creation, to creativity itself, and to the author who brought it into being,” he said.

English major Marley Roache ’27 said her most memorable moment in one of Phillips’ recent classes was when he moved the session from classroom to baseball diamond when they learned about America’s national pastime (the subject, too, of Rowan’s soon-to-be published book, I Just Want Them to Remember Me: Black Baseball in America). 

“He showed up in class with a baseball and a baseball bat. And I asked, ‘Are we going to be playing baseball?’ And he goes, ‘Stop asking good questions.’ It was a gorgeous day. Not a cloud in the sky, just a really fun time right behind the Humanities building. It was such a great way to have this lived experience, and our class has been even more engaged after that lesson. I don’t think having fun and engaging with the material in a meaningful way have to be necessarily separate things. And I feel like Professor Phillips is proof of that.”

Jessica Vestuto ’18, BA English, current editor for Mariner Books, HarperCollins Publishers, said she wouldn’t be doing what’s she’s doing now without Phillips’ influence. 

“Every edit I make, every book I acquire — Professor Phillips showed me how to be that kind of reader, writer and thinker. He encouraged me to think deeply about words and their meaning, a skill I use not just as an editor and writer, but as a human. He taught me to question every word, every syllable, every absence. It fueled my professional ambitions and enriched my experience of the world.”

Aman Rahman ’25 recently completed a double major in Health Sciences and in English. Now pursuing a Master of Arts in Critical Approaches to Science, Technology and Medicine, he said, “In Professor Phillips’ poetry class, each session was devoted to a single poem, which we would read, reread and read aloud and then discuss at length. That clarity of focus, his great effort to redirect the attention of his students, is what makes Phillips a good instructor; though, more importantly, he follows the attention of his students, allowing us to take conversations where we want them to go. While I’m not getting a degree in English, literature is hugely important to global histories of medicine, and it’s especially useful in my research on grief since literature — especially through poetry traditions like the elegy — has been a mode through which grief has been expressed.”

The truth, said Phillips, is that as much as he gives his students, they give back to him many times over. 

“I love my students here because they ask the essential questions: Why is this? What is this? Can I do this? Can I be me and accepted as me if I give myself to this? I’ve had some very real conversations with students who are in very complicated spaces. They help me stay true to being a real person and living a real life, which is what I’m interested in. They also teach me different angles of ascent and points of entry into art as I look at things through their eyes, their perspectives. In the broadest sense, they give me such hope for the future, and I get to enjoy the huge gratification in seeing them, and maybe even helping them in some small way, to learn and grow, as writers and as human beings.”

For more about Professor Phillips, read our story on his recent lecture, “Why Poetry?”