After a remarkable career in higher education that has seen her serve as the Chair of the University of Michigan English Department, the Director of the Michigan institute for the Humanities, and the President of the Modern Language Association, Sidonie Smith offers Manifesto for the Humanities as a reflective contribution to the current academic conversation over the place of the humanities in the 21st century. Her focus, as the subtitle indicates, is on doctoral education and opportunities she sees for its reform. "The 'Grand Challenge' confronting academic humanists," Smith avers, "is the imperative of sustaining passionate conviction about the value of studying the humanities in a climate of funding scarcity, corporatization, and neoliberal market economics. Responsibility for that sustainability-in the academy, in the nation, and around the globe-lies in part with humanities doctoral students, now or soon-to-be entering careers, who are driven by the desire to continue conversations, journeys, and discoveries, whether they take place in archives, in lines of poetry, in the logic of the assertion, or in the dirt of the dig. These doctoral students are preparing to play their role as agents of change for a sustainable future." Grounded in research and a thorough background study of factors contributing to current "crises" in the humanities, Smith's project advocates for a broadening or "re-opening" of some of the more hermetic aspects of ultra-specialization, towards further interdisciplinary bridge-building and towards a more robust, engaged public humanities. Book jacket.