137 6 Personal Theory A Method for Humanities Scholarship in a New Media Moment Abigail De Kosnik THE (UN)IMPORTANCE OF WRITING METHODS IN THE HUMANITIES A decade into the 21st century, methods of scholarly writing in the humani- ties disciplines are rarely a topic of discussion. After a tumultuous thirty- year period, spanning roughly the late 1960s through the late 1990s, when different methods—deconstruction, New Historicism, discourse analysis, to name a few—vied for preeminence in the humanities fields, the furious debates over what type of scholarly writing seems most appropriate, most relevant, most interesting and significant and suitable, for our generation and the demands of our times, has subsided. Perhaps humanities departments at universities across the United States and throughout the world have become thoroughly postmodern, in the sense of being ecumenical and accepting of the full range of methodologi- cal diversity practiced by their faculty members. It could be that a post- modern tendency for mixing various styles and approaches has influenced academic writing to the point of becoming a key characteristic of contem- porary scholarship, as Clifford Geertz suggested in his 1979 masterpiece on method, “Blurred Genres.” Or perhaps the sharp differences of opinion over writing methodology that, in previous years, divided academics into antagonistic camps simply recessed, went underground, and became pri- vately held, rather than publicly aired, judgments. I cannot here account for all the mechanisms that effected a sea-change on the subject of method from twenty or thirty years ago to today, the sea-change being that humani- ties scholars used to battle in journal articles and book chapters over the worth and merit of each other’s approaches to, and practices of, critical 11_302_13_Ch_6.indd 137 11_302_13_Ch_6.indd 137 7/11/11 6:37 AM 7/11/11 6:37 AM