The Ends of Knowledge: Outcomes and Endpoints Across the Arts and Sciences

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction Seth Rudy and Rachael Scarborough King Part I: Unification The Ends of Physics B. R. Brown The Ends of Literary Studies Aaron Hanlon The Ends of Computing Geoffrey C. Bowker The Ends of Biology B.N. Queenan The Ends of Digital Humanities Mark Algee-Hewitt Part II: Access The Ends of Law Yochai Benkler The Ends of Journalism Jolene Almendarez The Ends of Pedagogy Sean Michael Morris The Ends of the Liberal Arts G. Gabrielle Starr Part III: Utopia The Ends of Artificial Intelligence Hong Qu The Ends of Gender Studies Ula Lukszo Klein The Ends of Activism Ady Barkan The Ends of Environmental Studies Myanna Lahsen Part IV: Concepts The Ends of Performance Studies Jessica Nakamura The Ends of History Marieke Hendriksen The Ends of Black Studies Kenneth W. Warren The Ends of Cultural Studies Mike Hill Afterword Clifford Siskin List of Contributors Index

About the Author :
Rachael Scarborough King is Associate Professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, USA; she studies the literature and media of the long eighteenth century, with particular interests in newspapers, periodicals, and letters. She is the author of Writing to the World: Letters and the Origins of Modern Print Genres and editor of After Print: Eighteenth-Century Manuscript Cultures. She completed her Ph.D. in English and American Literature at New York University, and her B.A. in Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. Seth Rudy is Associate Professor and Charles M. Glover Chair of English at Rhodes College, USA, where he studies the history of ideas and encyclopedic knowledge projects of the eighteenth century. He is the author of Literature and Encyclopedism in Enlightenment Britain: The Pursuit of Complete Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). He completed his Ph.D. in English and American Literature at New York University, and his BFA in Film Production at the Tisch School of the Arts.

Review :
This book is organized around a central pun like all great works of scholarship. It queries the ends of knowledge, but here the “end” might mean telos, completion or cessation. The editors have assembled a genuinely productive and heterogeneous collection, but they wisely acknowledge that their volume is open-ended, unfinished and generative in the spirit of the Enlightenment encyclopedia project which provides its inspiration and warrant.