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Photo: Caitlin Cunningham
BOOKS
Undeclared
Associate Professor Chris Higgins on improving higher ed.
Fall 2024
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In 1933, a group of educators dissatisfied with the state of higher education opened Black Mountain College, an experimental liberal arts institution in North Carolina where farming, construction projects, and making art were as much a part of student education as classroom learning. The goal was to create a flexible, creative educational environment that produced independent thinkers. Black Mountain closed in 1957, but the college remains an inspiration to Boston College Associate Professor Chris Higgins, who argues in a new book that higher education has departed from its mission of educating the whole person in favor of preparing students to find employment.
In Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education, Higgins draws heavily from the lessons of Black Mountain College. In a collection of essays, he explores how modern higher ed is failing to help students find their purpose and has instead become a consumer good. In this new “job-ified” setting, he writes, students feel pressure to simply pick a major, acquire credentials in a single discipline, and go on to get a job.
Higgins argues in Undeclared that, in addition to academics, institutions of higher education should focus on the social, ethical, and spiritual development of their students. That’s what drew him to Boston College and its emphasis on formative education. “People think of education as simply a kind of device for return on investment in a very literal, narrow way—tuition dollars versus salary,” he said recently. “That distorts what education is about.”
Decades later, the Black Mountain College experiment still has much to teach us today, Higgins argued. The faculty didn’t just prioritize intellectual exploration; it constantly monitored whether the school was living up to its mission. That’s something all universities should do, he said. The idea is not to recreate an exact Black Mountain, but to ask questions, just as each year the Black Mountain faculty asked themselves, “Who do we want to be?”
Briefly
The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Writings: Tales of a Newspaper Woman
by Elizabeth Garver Jordan, edited by Jane Carr and BC Professor of the Practice Lori Harrison-Kahan
This collection of stories attests to Garver Jordan’s feminist influence as a trailblazing journalist and suffragist who ascended from true-crime reporter to acclaimed editor and fiction writer in the male-dominated literary world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The Big Squeeze
by Molly Harris ’10
A plucky kitchen sponge is the unlikely protagonist of this children’s book, which chronicles the sponge’s misadventures while soaking up everyone’s household messes. She soon becomes too sodden to move. Her eventual solution to the problem provides a lesson to young readers about the importance of utilizing self-care to prevent burnout.
Irish Materialisms: The Nonhuman and the Making of Colonial Ireland, 1690–1830
by BC Assistant Professor of English and Irish Studies Colleen Taylor
What do coins, flax, spinning wheels, mud, and pigs have in common? They were all part of everyday life in colonial Ireland, and they are the focal points of this examination of Irish life during that era. Through a study of these items, Taylor outlines how each one gradually became a symbol of the new Irish national character—for instance, how spinning wheels came to represent hardworking Irish peasants.
The Astrology House
by Carinn Jade ’98
Mystery and family drama intertwine in Jade’s debut novel, which follows a group of wealthy New Yorkers who embark on an astrology-themed retreat for a break from their stressful lives. But the weekend away becomes anything but relaxing when a shocking death reveals secrets that members of the group have been keeping from each other.
Illustration: Arthur Mount
WHAT I'M READING
Roadside Picnic
by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
In this classic sci-fi novel, protagonist Redrick ventures out into a mysterious “Zone” to collect alien artifacts to sell on the black market. What stood out to me as a physicist was the subtle ways the “Zone” affected each of the characters, as well as the systematic exploration tactics Redrick must use to survive. What the book is ultimately concerned with is how we as humans respond to forces far beyond our comprehension.
—Alexander Auner, assistant professor of the practice and undergraduate program director in the BC physics department
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