Hamilton and Liberal Arts
Broadway seems to have really identified with Hamilton. This hip-hop opera recently won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Given the liberal arts education that its creator Lin-Manuel Miranda received, Michael Roth (President of Wesleyan University) says that “we should have seen something like this coming”:
Hamilton is an extraordinary artistic achievement at once traditional and experimental. That’s the kind of synthesis that those of us working in liberal arts colleges are always hoping for: making the past come alive in ways that expand possibilities in the present.
In Hamilton, Manuel uniquely re-imagines for contemporary citizens the proverbial ‘dead white men’, and Roth attributes this ability to the educational path the young actor travelled as an undergraduate. He also draws interesting parallels between Manuel’s education and the kind students received during Hamilton’s own day:
When Alexander Hamilton’s generation considered higher education, many believed it was crucial that students not think they already knew at the beginning of their studies where they would end up when it was time for graduation … learning was all about exploration - and you would only make important discoveries if you were open to unexpected possibilities.
