United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
IrelandStudy Hall gives the humanities a funeral, then a toast
Dr. Emily Zarka traces decades of crisis headlines alongside the fields' changing place in college education.
Study Hall
Story of Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.
The Death of the Humanities: An Investigation
Things we can learn from the video
Press to jump
- 2:11Humanities bachelor's degrees declined between 2012 and 2022, alongside cuts to university programs.
- 2:49Archival headlines show that warnings about the humanities dying recur across decades.
- 4:16Humanities education has roots in Chinese, Greco-Roman, Islamic and Renaissance traditions.
- 13:46Medical humanities, digital humanities and career-integrated programs offer examples of institutional adaptation.
- 17:31Zarka argues that shared culture helps give scientific achievements their human meaning.
Study Hall opens its humanities investigation with a mock funeral. By the end, host Dr. Emily Zarka is raising a glass to their survival. The interesting part is how she gets from one to the other.
"The Death of the Humanities: An Investigation" was the larger draw of two new uploads, reaching about 13,000 views. Zarka, an ASU English educator and host of Monstrum, acknowledges declining degree numbers and program cuts rather than waving them away. Then she opens the historical archive: warnings of impending collapse turn out to have a remarkably long shelf life. "Apparently, the humanities have been dying for at least 80 years," she says.
Her account reaches beyond European universities to ancient China's Six Arts and the Islamic tradition of adab, before examining medical humanities, digital humanities and programs that connect cultural study with careers. In the comments, viewers debate whether education's value should be measured through employment, whether integrated courses help traditional departments survive, and what critical thinking contributes. A mention of fan-fiction archive AO3 gets its own little burst of recognition.
The companion upload, "Are The Humanities Dead?", points viewers toward the investigation. Both feature among the channel's busiest videos right now, alongside September's "The Guide to Math Basics," which rebuilds foundations from numbers and arithmetic to abstract and applied problems.
Study Hall added roughly a thousand subscribers over the week, though its daily viewing is currently below its usual level. Among nearby education channels, Drop A Pin had a much larger viewing week, while The Geography Bible was quieter. Here, the distinctive new contribution is Zarka's refusal to confuse a real institutional crisis with the disappearance of the ideas themselves.
Published on Trari
Where next?
What viewers say
No way study hall just mentioned Ao3
@hermionegranger-pr8dsSee it on YouTubeTo me, the humanities are essentially the study of human culture, and the study of human culture can help us fully understand what it means to be a human being, which in turn can help us be genuinely human beings.
@RichardBeaudetteSee it on YouTubeThank you for this video, and raising my hopes.
@deviatefishySee it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
Is this your channel?For the channel's owners and team: a ready picture and text for your audience
Share the story with your audience. Everything is ready:
For an Instagram story or a WhatsApp status
For a community post or your channel's description
The videos drawing views on Study Hall right now
- Channel
- Study Hall
- Subscribers
- 175,000 ▲ 1,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 84,036
- Videos published this week
- 2
- Video published
- November 4, 2026
- Video views so far
- 12,531
- Views on its first day
- 4,519
The numbers
Here is Study Hall's week in views and subscribers.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which series does Dr. Emily Zarka host?
Zarka introduces herself in the investigation as the host of Monstrum.