Given what seems a constant barrage of criticism aimed at the academy from politicians and the public--and the great concern for buzz words like accountability and transparency--it has become fairly routine to see a defense of the humanities in opinion pieces in "Inside Higher Education," "The Chronicle of Higher Education," "The New York Times," and even CNN.com. The pieces range from defending the intrinsic worth of the humanities to defending the concrete skills that teachers teach, like critical thinking and writing. Most of these arguments seem to imply that it is one way or the other; the defenders who argue for the former tend to see the pragmatic conversation as sullying the aesthetics of the disciplines, while the defenders arguing for the latter see the lack of discussion of anything other than marketable skills as pie-in-the-sky idealism. The author is certainly not the first to make this observation--and she hopes that she is not the last--but she thinks it is possible to make both arguments. In this article, the author first considers the role the humanities play in the teaching of those core skills of critical thinking, one of the more practical aspects of the humanities. Though, of course, she hopes that she also conveys to her students her own love of literary studies, with the focus on the beauty of the art and the intellectual stimulation of literary criticism. From there, the author will present her own experience of teaching Renaissance Literature as a case study in the ways that teachers can teach critical thinking in their literature classrooms.