Overview
This dataset of what humanities stakeholders say the humaniites are and do, and why they are valuable, accompanies my article, “Unspeakable Humanities: Planning for Restructuring the Humanities,” forthcoming in a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies on “Forseeable Humanities Futures.” The dataset and my topic models of it (see contents) consists of 742 brief, unique quotations from 692 different sources (see Excel spreadsheet all_quotes.xlxs). These are grouped in 11 source sets—ten sets (#1-10) holding quotations about the humanities by stakeholders of different sorts, and, for comparison, one set (#11) with quotations about the arts by higher ed arts institutions and programs:
- higher education institutions, divisions, or programs
- humanities centers
- major humanities funders
- humanities professional associations (such as the MLA or AHA)
- humanities councils (US state and other jurisdictional humanities councils)
- university and college alumni magazines (focusing on articles about the humanities)
- “humanities-plus” or “humanities+” higher-education programs (e.g., environmental humanities, medical humanities, legal humanities, or digital humanities, urban humanities, energy humanities)
- public humanities programs and initiatives
- applied or practical humanities programs
- the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, museums)
- higher-ed arts institutions and programs (art, design, performing arts)
Included with this dataset is documentation of my data collection process. Also included is a topic model of the humanities quotations (explore) and a topic model of the arts quotations (explore)—including Mallet topic model data files, and interactive web pages and visualizations for examining the models.
Key parts of this resource are available directly here on my personal website–including readme and other documents, HTML pages, and the all_quotes.xlsx spreadsheet with my cumulative data. (See links in the table of contents table below.) However, other materials such as .csv files and Mallet topic model data files are only available by downloading this resource as a package in a .zip file deposited for permanence in the open-data Zenodo repository (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21301673). (I do not also put the kit in a GitHub repository because some data exceeds GitHub file size limits.)
Dataset Contents
Download all parts as a single .zip file here (2.09 Mb). Selected parts of the kit are directly accessible from links in the table below:
| Folder# | Description | Primary Items in Folder
(Links go to materials on alanyliu.org website. For full kit, with all data, download the .zip file)
|
Format(s) | Tips for the General User |
| 0 |
readme
|
.docx
|
||
| 1 |
data collection documentation
|
|
.docx
|
|
| 2 |
dataset
|
|
.cvs, .xlxs
|
This folder is the main payload of this resource. Readers interested in what humanities stakeholders typically say in their definitional statements about the humanities can browse through the spreadsheets. Each sheet contains verbatim quotes with abbreviated source metadata.
|
| 3 |
topic models
|
|
.mallet, .gz, .xml, .txt, .html
|
For the general reader, the interactive web pages named “interactively_explore_topics.html” in this folder will be the most useable for gaining a sense of the topic models. (The pages are linked live here on my personal website, but can also be downloaded as standalone HTML pages to be opened in a local browser. The pages are also included in the .zip file for for this whole resource.)
|
Notable Limitations of Dataset
As explained in my “Unspeakable Humanities” article:
Copyright
Quotations from humanities and arts stakeholders contained in my dataset remain under the copyright or license of their original sources, and are included here as brief excerpts under fair use doctrine. Non-consumptive use data about, and data models of, these materials that I have created (such as topic models and web pages for exploring them) are published under a CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International) license.
Cite
- As presented on my personal website: Alan Liu, “Humanities Stakeholder Claims About the Humanities: Dataset and Topic Models.” January 16, 2026. https://alanyliu.org/citation/humanities-stakeholder-claims-dataset/”
This presentation of my resource includes documents, spreadsheets, live HTML pages with visualization interfaces, and other materials that can be accessed directly and individually downloaded or opened in a browser. However, the resource on my personal website excludes some data such as .cvs files and large topic model data files; and, of course, a personal website is not designed for archival permanence.
- Full .zip archive (with all data) permanently deposited in Zenodo: Alan Liu, “Humanities Stakeholder Claims About the Humanities: Dataset and Topic Models,” Zenodo, 2026, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21301674.
This zip file contains all data and documents in the resource. If updated, the zip file will be versioned in Zenodo with separate DOI’s that can be cited individually if needed.
