The Center promotes understanding of the humanities and highlights their vital role in a vibrant, democratic society through a variety of public programs and initiatives, podcasts, and events.
Humanities in Action
Individual Rights vs. Social Responsibilities in a Pandemic
In a pluralistic society committed to personal freedom, how can the humanities help us take action to ensure the common good?
Healing Rifts and Restoring Civility
What role do the humanities play in resolving conflicts, establishing justice, and fostering unity?
Addressing Structural Racism in the Academy
We must pay attention to those whose experiences of the academy have been shaped by encounters with racial bias if we are to have hope of correcting it.
Pursuing Justice and Preserving Open Debate
How do we balance our pursuit of a more just and equitable society with our desire to protect freedom of expression?
Humanities Moments
The Fish on Marchmont Street
On her way to one of the world’s most famous collections of paper documents, Mitra Sharafi (NHC Fellow, 2020–21) was shown another kind of artifact from the past.
Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have left their indelible imprint on American history and culture. This exhibit focuses on the experiences, contributions, and cultural legacies of the Asian Pacific diaspora.
A National Reckoning
Contributors to this collection reflect on the long, and often overlooked, history of racial inequality with an eye towards how the humanities can help overcome past injustices.
Creating Shelter: Moments from Home
In this collection of moments, contributors imagine home as a place, a feeling, a set of relationships, and as a site of learning and personal growth.
Podcasts
Language, Law, and the Limits of Digital Autonomy
Janny HC Leung (Fellow, 2020–21)
The evolution of standards and practices around digital discourse has the potential to reshape the concept of free speech as we know it.
Distant Horizons: Reading in the Age of Algorithms
Ted Underwood (Fellow, 2018–19)
Underwood discusses his research using algorithmic models to better understand fiction from the nineteenth century to the present.
Discovery and Inspiration
Podcast Series
What makes scholars so passionate about the subjects they pursue? What is it like for them to make a new discovery? To answer a confounding question? And what can we learn by taking the time to ask scholars about the research they are doing?
Nerds in the Woods
Podcast Series
A series of virtual audio journeys through the intellectual woods, surveying some of the compelling topics being studied by historians and philosophers, scholars of literature, art, and other fields who come to the Center from all over the world.
Events
Lorraine Daston, “Science Goes Global”
October 13, 2021
In this Scholar-to-Scholar talk, Lorraine Daston (NHC Fellow, 2021–22) discusses how scientists began developing international collaborations and organizations in the late nineteenth century.
In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities
April 7–22, 2021
This conference included a series of virtual events highlighting perspectives from leading humanists, scientists, engineers, artists, writers, and executives collectively advancing inquiry into key emerging questions around artificial intelligence.
Between Teacher and Student: The Obligations of Mentorship
February 25, 2021
Looking at traditions from the ancient world to the modern era, three NHC Fellows discuss the nature of mentorship in different cultural contexts and how the concept of mentorship continues to resonate in contemporary classrooms.
Virtual Book Club: Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice
February 24, 2021
Catherine M. Cole (NHC Fellow 2006–07) reveals how the voices and visions of artists in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo can help us see what otherwise evades perception from the injustices produced by apartheid and colonialism.
Videos
The Price of Injustice: A Scholar-to-Scholar Conversation
Panel Discussion
Though these three scholars focus on different periods and places, their work illuminates the myriad ways that racism and systemic injustice affect us all.
“Local Color” Artists’ Panel
Moderated by William Ferris
Ferris, esteemed Southern folklorist and former chairman of the NEH, talks with photographers Joel Elliott and Richard Schramm about their experiences traveling around the region taking pictures.
Educating Citizens and Reforming Generations
Alan Taylor (Fellow, 1993–94)
In the wake of the American Revolution, republican reliance on popular sovereignty complicated efforts by elites to improve voters through education.
An Evening with Seymour Hersh
NHC Public Event
Seymour “Sy” Hersh, one of our nation’s most important investigative journalists, discusses his most recent book, Reporter: A Memoir.
