A Year in Review 2023-24

CENTER FORTHE HUMAN ITIES

Annual Report

Table of Contents

02/ LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR

04/ HUMAN TIES

Highlights from the Center for the Humanities blog, where humanities scholars share stories from their research with all readers.

04/ Q&A with writer Amitava Kumar

With freshly published novel My Beloved Life in hand, Indian author Amitava Kumar, who now lives in the U.S., recently gave a talk at WashU. Comparative literature PhD student Jey Sushil caught up with Kumar to discuss the new book, writing for Indian as well as Western readers and why a carefully curated bookshelf could improve your writing.

06/ The man and the March

Some 250,000 visitors filled the National Mall on Aug. 28, 1963. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is now regarded as a landmark event, but the massive organizational effort required to pull it off needed a talented leader at the helm. Enter Bayard Rustin — a multilayered figure whose background in direct action and “creative nonviolence” uniquely prepared him for the part, writes Paige McGinley, a scholar of performance studies and the Civil Rights Movement.

08/ Unfreezing the frame: The art of the embodied experience

Three-dimensional artwork comes alive when experienced in the flesh, says art historian Nathaniel B. Jones. Guiding readers around the Vatican Museums’ statue of the mythical Laocoön, he describes the storytelling twists and turns the sculpture reveals when viewed dynamically — an effect impossible to capture in a static representation.

10/ Afro-Colombian artists call out poisoned fish and toxic politics

Environmental racism flourishes in the resource-rich lands of Colombia’s Pacific Coast, says Graduate Student Fellow Kaché Claytor. It’s a recurring topic for the music group ChocQuibTown, which brings public attention to the plight of the region’s people.

12/ INITIATIVES: PUBLIC HUMANITIES

The Center for the Humanities’ approach to public humanities is to build mutually beneficial and lasting partnerships with public partners, recognizing that humanists have as much to gain from the relationships as our partners do.

14/ INITIATIVES: INNOVATIONS IN THE HUMANITIES

Experimenting with new methods and forms of knowledge sparks new ways of training students, new metrics of assessing research and thoughtful reflections on our humanities values and communities.

16/ INITIATIVES: COLLABORATIVE HUMANITIES

Collaboration is a crucial process in the humanities, as scholars from different fields gather around shared research topics and draw from diverse disciplinary frames to approach crucial questions in our world today and to develop solutions.

18/ EVENTS + OUTREACH

Humanities work, from discussion to collaboration, is inherently social. Our signature events provide ample opportunities for faculty, students and the public to think together about rich, complex humanities topics.

18/ James E. McLeod Memorial Lecture on Higher Education Lorgia García Peña, professor of Latinx studies at Princeton University, gave the talk “Community as Rebellion.”

Still we rise … and we are tired Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Diversity Kia Lilly Caldwell shares her experience (and reading list) in surviving academia as a woman of color.

ON THE COVER

The Center for the Humanities and Tyson Research Center, Washington University’s environmental field station, hosted humanities graduate students in spring 2024 for a semester-long inquiry into the field of artistic research.

Students developed projects that connected the practices of artistic research — that is, research about, for or through art; and/or art about, for or through research — to their critical and intellectual work in fields as varied as classical music, migration studies and creative writing.

World War II-era bunkers, which dot the Tyson landscape, provided the setting for several projects. Students presented their works in progress during a culminating two-day on-site workshop and gathering.

Nicole Seymour, professor of English, California State University, Fullerton, gave the talk “In Defense of Tackiness: The Queer Environmental Politics of Glitter.”

Glitter bombs and green queens:

Nicole Seymour’s irreverent take on environmental humanities

Assistant director Laura Perry interviews the Faculty Book Celebration keynote speaker, whose work in the environmental humanities asks how literature and other cultural forms — from documentary film to stand-up comedy — mediate our relationship to environmental crisis.

27/ FELLOWS

The community of scholars at the Center for the Humanities includes Faculty Fellows, BECHS-Africa Fellows, an ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow, Graduate Student Fellows and Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellows.

28/ The politics of time: The lessons of Sabbath for seeking justice

Fannie Bialek, Assistant Professor, Danforth Center on Religion and Politics

29/ Modernist physiognomy

Anca Parvulescu, the Liselotte Diekmann Professor of Comparative Literature, Department of English

30/ The science and philosophy of mental health

Anya Plutynski, Professor, Department of Philosophy

31/ In digital worlds and on physical stages, directors invite audiences into the story

Elizabeth Hunter, Assistant Professor, Performing Arts Department

32/ The caliph’s counselor

Hayrettin Yücesoy, Associate Professor, Department of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies

33/ Japan’s “five-foot giant” of international relations

Lori Watt, Associate Professor, Department of History

38/ FACULTY RESEARCH SUPPORT

The Center for the Humanities invests in faculty research via an internal grants program, a proposal writing information session and workshop, a scholarly writing retreat and support for limited competitions.

42/ STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

The graduate and undergraduate student engagement mission of the Center for the Humanities broadened and deepened significantly over the past year, with support from external grants, novel and expanded programming, and a new staff member to oversee it all.

46/ GIVING OPPORTUNITIES

With your help, the Center for the Humanities can extend its reach to global communities and expand its network of scholars to promote the humanities and the importance of humanistic ideas.

July

Environmental Humanities & Arts Working Group kicked off Year 2 of Sumner Studiolab and high school internship began (below, interns at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum)

August

Assistant Director for Student Research and Engagement

Meredith Kelling joined humanities center

“The Politics of Reproduction” Studiolab course for graduate and undergraduate students launched

September

Weekly Humanities Writing Commons for graduate students opened, offering a space for quiet, focused writing alongside peers

October

Letter from the Director

For those who have been paying attention to our past issues, we are trying a novel approach to documenting our events and programs as you can see here. This visual timeline of some (but not all!) of our programming captures the vibrant life of the Center for the Humanities over the last year in which WashU humanists, guests, faculty from other disciplines, students and community members came together to listen, think, engage in, and discuss a range of urgent and dynamic topics. This design format also allows us a unique way to highlight our new initiatives at the center. While varying in content and format, all these initiatives have at their core a focus on collaboration and community. While the traditional image of the humanities scholar or student is that of a person who works on individual projects, often in a solitary office or library carrel, that image, while still applicable, does not capture the type of collaborative research projects and pedagogical undertakings in which many humanists engage today.

Two members of the two-year Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellowship program endorsed for Rhodes and Marshall Fellowships

Hundreds gathered online and in person for the James E. McLeod Memorial Lecture with Lorgia García Peña

November

Sponsored the “Human Ties” spotlight series at the St. Louis International Film Festival

“Rethinking Tenure and Promotion Assessment in the Humanities: A Blueprint for Transformation and Innovation,” an event that brought together national leaders in humanities organizations, scholars doing innovative work in the humanities, as well as thought leaders at WashU and other institutions

The center’s recently formed research groups speak to the fostering of a humanities research community that is integral to our work at the center. These two groups — focused on environmental humanities and reproductive justice, respectively, made up of faculty across the humanities, arts, and other fields, and supported by center staff — have come together to design programs and events, write grants for

January

Received NEH grant for “Humanities at Work: Graduate Internships for the Next Generation”

Launched Banned Book Fellowship for Arts & Sciences undergraduates

Talia Dan-Cohen (Anthropology) began term as associate director

December

New funding opportunities monthly newsletter launched

February

Faculty Book Celebration with environmental humanities

scholar Nicole Seymour

New internal awards, including next Faculty Fellow cohort, announced

March

RDE artistic research grad students continued development of their projects at Tyson Research Center

Grad students explored writing and public interest careers in “Writing as Advocacy” roundtable + workshop

May

Scholarly Writing Retreat

Sumner

Studiolab interns graduated

June

April

“The Power of Buttons” explored their use as tools of social movements and community building

Interdisciplinary scholars gathered for “The Humanities in the AI Future” symposium

Launched revised Divided City Summer Graduate Research Fellowship, with a new focus on connecting with publics beyond the university

external funding, plan publications and engage students. With these two groups — and others in the pipeline — our goal is to support and enhance humanistic collaborative research, build community among scholars, strengthen ties within humanistic disciplines and forge additional ties beyond them.

Other collaborative projects this year include our undergraduate Banned Books Fellows, who researched and presented their findings together, as well as a workshop for graduate students on how to use writing to advocate for themselves and their communities. At the center, we

look forward to expanding these initiatives and continuing to position ourselves as a space for collaborative research excellence and innovation. We believe that the best work happens in community and that a robust community helps us to do our best work. We look forward to welcoming you!

Stephanie Kirk Director, Center for the Humanities

Q&A with writer Amitava Kumar

Jey Sushil is a PhD student in the Program in Comparative Literature, Track for International Writers. His research interests include postcolonial studies and world literature.

Celebrated author Amitava Kumar describes himself as an “in between” writer — one whose fiction and nonfiction works explore themes of migration, history and memory on the local and the global scale. Born and raised in India and now based in the U.S., Kumar situates himself between these two literary and geographic poles. As an in-between writer, Kumar tries to stay true to his provincial past — like Vinod Kumar Shukla, whose writing seems unmarked by globalization — while also negotiating the perils and privileges — like the globetrotting Pico Iyer — of his cosmopolitan present.

When Kumar visited WashU, I talked with him about his most recent novel, My Beloved Life (praised by Salman Rushdie as “extraordinary”), writing for Indian as well as Western readers and why a carefully curated bookshelf could improve your writing.

Your new novel, My Beloved Life, is a story about an ordinary man, Jadunath Kunwar, who comes from a village and becomes a historian in Patna. Normally, novels have a hero who does something extraordinary, or some important events occur in the story. Is it a move on your part to tell the story of an ordinary man?

There is a story by Jhumpa Lahiri called The Third and Final Continent, which is about a man who arrives in this country on the same day that the American astronauts have landed on the moon. As he is drifting off to sleep, the man thinks that the distance he has crossed, the journeys he has undertaken, might not be as extraordinary or as special as what the astronauts have done, but it too is impressive and even bewildering to him.

I am using that as an example to say to you that I always had this thought in my mind: Don’t the ordinary people in this world deserve a narrative of their own? What is ordinary conceals the wonder of life. The very fact that you and I are here talking in this space is both ordinary and magical. What has brought the two of us here? We were born a few hundred miles from each other [in India], and we have our own particular histories, but here we are sitting down having this conversation in St. Louis. There is a story here, too.

You often refer to Western authors in your novel. There is a mention of Somerset Maugham in My Beloved Life, and in your other novel, Immigrant Montana, you have a long paragraph about William Wordsworth’s “daffodils” poem. Is that because you want Western audiences to connect with your work?

In all my novels, writers are mentioned, and not just Western ones. In My Beloved Life, for example, I invoke Indian writers like Agyeya, Nagarjun, Muktibodh, Mahadevi Verma, Firaq Gorakhpuri …

Somerset Maugham was a popular writer in the colonies. I read him in India. My goal in mentioning George Orwell is to lay a certain claim on him, to say that this person who you have thought of as an iconic English writer has his origins in the East and, more than that, the circumstances of his birth are tied to colonial designs of the British in India and China. Orwell’s father was an opium subagent for the British in Motihari.

In your lecture at WashU, you shared a collection of tips on writing. Can you elaborate on this one? “Choose one book, or five, but no more than 10, to guide you, not with research necessarily, but with the critical matter of method or style.”

Whenever you are writing a book, stylistically, there is a voice in your head. There is a particular tone in your writing. So, you should have a book or books whose voice matches the voice in your head. In my novel, the idea of telling an ordinary story came to me from a novel called Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. That book was on my shelf. But I was also trying to write the story of another generation, another woman, and Akhil Sharma’s book An Obedient Father had appealed to me and I had it on my shelf. The book you are trying to write is like a tent that covers you. The six books I want you to have are the pegs that you drive into the tent to keep it in place so that the wind does not blow it away.

The man and the March

Paige McGinley is associate professor in the Performing Arts Department and director of the American Culture Studies program.

Infrastructure doesn’t seem to be the most likely backbone for a feature film. How thrilling, in the end, can it be to watch a bunch of people raising money, arguing about logistics and securing sound systems?

And yet the 2023 film Rustin is just that: a drama about the preparations for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The March is, of course, well remembered for the 250,000 people who filled the National Mall demanding an end to racial discrimination in public accommodations and employment. It is well remembered for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech and for Mahalia Jackson’s stirring performance of “How I Got Over.” But the driving force behind the March — the person responsible for its vision, its organization and its planning — was less well known in his own time and remains so in ours. Directed by George C. Wolfe, Rustin seeks to remedy that omission with its rich and compassionate exploration of Bayard Rustin’s leadership — and the way he was sidelined from the movement by those who considered his sexuality a liability.

While the film largely focuses on the months leading up to the March, Rustin’s contributions to the movement extended far beyond this signal event. Raised in a Quaker family in Pennsylvania, Bayard Rustin (1912–1987) held a lifelong philosophical commitment to nonviolence. A conscientious objector who spent 28 months in federal prison for refusing military service, he was a student of Gandhi’s Free India Movement and began to experiment with nonviolent direct action in the 1940s. In 1943, he began to lead interracial institutes organized around the study and practice of what he called “creative nonviolence.” These institutes culminated in real-world experiments that tested the compliance of restaurants, movie theaters and swimming pools bound by nondiscrimination ordinances and were important forerunners to the sit-ins, kneel-ins and wade-ins of the 1960s.

In order to prepare participants for direct action, Rustin innovated the use of sociodramas — role-playing rehearsals that allowed participants to explore creative responses to segregation. The sociodrama was a core preparation technique that was used widely throughout the movement over decades, and it’s one we see at work in a pivotal scene in Rustin. Here, Rustin trains the Black New York City police officers who will serve at the March on Washington. Having surrendered their service weapons, they need to practice regulating their own embodied responses to racial hatred and abuse.

The sociodramas were a critical part of the civil rights infrastructure this film represents. We see throughout that Rustin knew the value not only of logistical preparation, but the importance of preparing bodies and spirits for a new world. We see how embodied, how interpersonal, how co-present organizing was for Rustin and his colleagues in this pre-digital world. Yes, there were mimeograph machines and WATS telephone lines, but without Slack, WhatsApp and Google Docs, organizers had no choice but to gather together in a dirty room, sweep out the cobwebs, confront their differences and get the job done.

Rustin’s huge laugh, resonant singing voice, tender vulnerability and his commitment to living as an out gay man in a world dominated by the closet all bundled together to make a larger-than-life figure. Colman Domingo’s Oscar nomination as the film’s lead is profoundly deserved; his performance captures Rustin’s charismatic abundance without turning him into a caricature. We are left with a sense of what drew so many to his leadership as well as the humility and selflessness with which he led, in a world so often bent on denying the fullness of his humanity.

Figure 3

Figure 2

Figure 1

Unfreezing the frame: The art of the embodied experience

Nathaniel B. Jones is an associate professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology.

It is not the most famous or the most crowded corner of the Vatican Museums — that remains the Sistine Chapel — but even at 8:30 p.m. on a Friday, waves of tourist groups come up to an alcove in the Belvedere Courtyard. They are there to see the Laocoön (Figure 1), and as each new group arrives, a pattern is repeated: The visitors crowd in, ducking around one another’s phones to find an unobstructed angle for a selfie and listening to a tour guide deliver, at least in the languages I can follow, a remarkably consistent and broadly accurate story.

The guides recount that this very statue was identified by Pliny the Elder, ancient encyclopedist and victim of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, as the product of three artists from Rhodes: Hagesandros, Polydoros and Athanodoros. That he, wrongly, claimed it was made from a single block of marble. That it depicts a scene from the deep mythological past, when a priest from the city of Troy, Laocoön, has warned the Trojans not to bring a large wooden horse inside the walls. But since the destruction of the city has been preordained, and the Greek soldiers hiding inside that horse are destined to sack Troy, he, along with his two sons, is now being punished by the gods in the form of two poisonous sea snakes, who envelop and bite their writhing bodies. That the statue was rediscovered in January 1506 and immediately became a sensation, a treasured possession of the pope and source of inspiration for artists from the Renaissance on. That it represents the pinnacle of artistic achievement in the representation of human anatomy, motion and emotion, depicted at a single moment in time at the height of the story’s narrative drama, just before Laocoön’s anguished death cries were raised up to the stars, as Virgil puts it.

It is this last claim, enshrined in Gotthold Lessing’s 1766 text Laokoon, that has brought me to the Vatican this evening. It seems to me to depend in no small part on a modern European approach to media, and I am curious to see how it will hold up under firsthand scrutiny. Such an approach entails, firstly, a privileging of the expressive and narrative power of verbal text over material object or image, and, secondly, an internalization of the freeze-frame effect of mechanical reproductions of statues like this, first via the mechanism of print and later through photography. These media show the statue from a single point of view, almost inevitably the frontal one, which

is immobile and immutable, and which, in the case of a photograph, records something like a single instant in time.

But this freeze-frame effect is not, I find, much in evidence during the embodied experience of viewing the statue. That experience is one of the iterative opening and closing of different points of view over an extended temporal duration. As I move around the alcove housing the statue, the instantaneity of Lessing’s version of the statue is distended, and a single, fixed narrative dissolves into a variety of possibilities.

In approaching the group from the right (Figure 2), for example, the integrity of the bodies of the figures practically disappears, but the faces of Laocoön and his younger son achieve renewed prominence, and the head of the older son, seen entirely from behind, becomes a stand-in for our own act of viewing, albeit from within the very myth. The nature of the action, from this view, recedes into the background, and the composition becomes about intensity of emotion.

From the left (Figure 3), by contrast, action and reaction take center stage, as bodies are not only more legible in their entireties, but narrative time is stretched out. Since we cannot make out the face of the younger son, his limp form seems to be already without life, and the gesture of the older son, pulling a snake down and off his left ankle, offers hope for escape. Each point of view seems to lead in a potentially different narrative direction, in ways that are much less linear than the textual accounts of either the mythical event or the statue itself.

Such instability tends to be squeezed out by the traditional tools of scholarly analysis, aided by the technologies that mediate and disseminate our images and ideas about the past, but it is fundamental to the supposedly naive experience of the tourist. And it points to a broader set of possibilities.

Each point of view seems to lead in a potentially different narrative direction, in ways that are much less linear than the textual accounts of either the mythical event or the statue itself.

By re-centering the embodied encounter with works of ancient art — the Laocoön and others — we might revivify such objects, liberating them not only from textual sources but from the fixed, immobile viewpoint of print and photo and opening up a new set of perspectives to understand how ancient artists sought to create stories in stone.

Afro-Colombian

artists call out poisoned fish and toxic politics

Kaché Claytor, a Graduate Student Fellow in spring 2024, earned a doctorate from the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and a certificate in American Culture Studies.

Yo no me como ese pesca’o así sea del Chocó.

Ese pesca’o envenena’o, ese no lo como yo.

Mucho ojo mi gente que quieren envenenarte la cabeza con pesca’o malo en la mesa.

I don’t eat that fish if it’s from Chocó.

That fish is poisoned, I don’t eat that fish. Be very careful my people, they want to poison your head with bad fish on the table.

—ChocQuibTown, “Pescao envenenao” (2007)

This stark warning against consuming the essential food of the Colombian Pacific Coast was first issued by the Afro-Colombian music group ChocQuibTown in 2007. Deriving its name from a lexical fusion of the region, Chocó, and its capital, Quibdó, the group foregrounds its regional identity as it composes music filled with political messages highlighting the realities of coastal Black Colombians, including topics of environmental racism and degradation. Their lyrics — in rhythm with their melodic blend of traditional Afro-Colombian music, hip-hop, salsa, funk, ska and jazz — speak to Black Colombian identity, experiences and realities in the place they call home: Chocó.

Situated in the country’s southwest coastal region, the Pacific Coast is both rich in resources and home to the largest concentration of Black Colombians, which makes it vulnerable to exploitation. Despite being recognized for collective rights of ancestral lands, territories and natural resources according to Law 70 of 1993, which established collective rights for Black communities, Black Colombians are increasingly displaced from their territories, dispossessed of their land and subjected to toxic environments from illegal mining.

Illegal mining pollution contaminates rivers and fish with mercury, which can be absorbed through the skin via contact with tainted water and ingested by eating fish. In effect, inhabitants of the Pacific Coast have consumed lethal

amounts of mercury. It has even been found in breast milk and in the pregnant womb. Mercury, along with other metal pollutants from illegal mining, can cause health problems, birth defects and death. These circumstances led environmental activist, Goldman Environmental Prize winner and current Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez to declare that “la contaminación de la minería es un genocidio” [the mining pollution is a genocide] years before she gained office in 2022.

In 2009, ChocQuibTown released the album Oro [Gold], which carried a through line of ancestral gold mining and the environmental degradation caused by illegal mining in the region. In an interview with Esme McAvoy of Upside Down World, a news outlet devoted to covering social movements and politics in Latin America, lead singer Goyo explained that “my grandparents worked all their lives in mining, searching for gold,” which catalyzed the album’s name. Black Colombians have ancestrally mined gold not only for economic security but also as a practice that carries cultural significance. ChocQuibTown called their album Oro, Goyo continued, to “represent the value we put on our own music but also to take a critical stance against the irresponsible exploitation of gold in the Chocó. It contaminates the rivers and damages the area’s incredible biodiversity.”

As depicted in the lyrics above, ChocQuibTown’s 2007 hit single “Pescao envenenao” [Poisoned Fish], from their Oro album, discourages eating fish from Chocó. It is poisoned, they caution. The phrase “poisoned fish” has a dual meaning in Chocó, as it also critiques those who should be advocating for the land and its people. In the same interview with Upside Down World, Goyo explained: “We use poisoned fish as a metaphor to criticize the political discourse in Colombia. When we talk about fish in the Chocó, it’s understood as a symbol of abundance. The rivers are full of fish, and it’s a staple food. When we talk of them being poisoned, it’s a comment on the way corruption has contaminated all layers of the political system. The empty promises of so many politicians.” The lyrics carry multilayered significance to critique the corruption in politics along with the contamination of rivers and fish with mercury and other toxic metals from illegal mining. This song serves as a public service announcement, alerting communities not to eat the poisoned fish from Chocó. While the group released these songs and this album in the early 2000s, the soundtrack of violence, exploitation, contamination, poisoning and degradation continues into the present day.

“Translating my research for the diverse group of participants was simultaneously challenging and rewarding. I learned something from every person who came to my table, whether they were 7 or 67.” — Marc Blanc, PhD student, English, who spoke with community members on the St. Louis General Strike of 1877

Initiatives: Public Humanities

While interacting with the public can take many forms — including community-engaged research or translating research for public audiences — the Center for the Humanities’ approach to public humanities is to build mutually beneficial and lasting partnerships with public partners. This model recognizes that humanists have as much to gain from the relationships (e.g., opportunities to build skills and to test how the humanities can contribute to the public good) as our partners do.

Sumner Studiolab and Internship

Wrapping up its second year, the Sumner Studiolab — a community hub and classroom space — brings together students from Sumner High School (the oldest high school established for African American students west of the Mississippi), WashU students and residents from the surrounding Ville neighborhood. Initially funded by WashU’s Divided City initiative (with Mellon Foundation support), the project was boosted by an additional three years of funding from the Office of the Provost through its Here and Next initiative.

This year’s cohort of Sumner High School interns was once again led by Crystal Payne, a PhD student in English and Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellow in American Culture Studies. Among their projects, the interns helped to create a real-world product: St. Louis–based Cheerz’s Sumner Seltzer. With the charge to celebrate the history of the high school and its neighborhood, the interns developed skills in historical research and local storytelling to help create the flavor, product name and topics to be depicted on the cans.

Additionally, two on-site Studiolab courses welcomed WashU students from both Arts & Sciences and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts: “Historic Preservation, Community and Memory,” which emphasized Sumner High School and the Ville neighborhood, and “The Unruly City,” which focused on local history and urban humanities.

Divided City Graduate Summer Research Fellows

Since 2017, the Divided City Graduate Summer Research Fellowship has been a crucial community for graduate students pursuing interdisciplinary research on urban segregation. This year, with support from Here and Next, the fellowship evolved to serve as a training opportunity for humanities graduate students seeking to gain experience designing public programs and connecting with collaborators beyond the university. Over summer 2024, fellows planned and executed a variety of events, including art-making workshops, public art installations,

urban writing communities, interviewing and storytelling work. The fellowship affords graduate students the time and resources to connect their studies with audiences who can learn from and contribute to their projects.

The cohort included Tahia Farhin Haque (Sam Fox School), Sophia Hatzikos (Sam Fox School), Sushil Kumar Jha (Comparative Literature), Amira Jihane Khelfallah (Comparative Literature), Derick Mattern (Comparative Literature), Yining Pan (Anthropology), Anca Roncea (Comparative Literature) and Khashayar Shahriyari (Music).

National Humanities Festival

In April, the Center for the Humanities participated as one of nine sites nationwide in the National Humanities Center’s first-ever “Being Human” festival. On April 18, the center, in partnership with local arts educator CJ Mitchell, hosted “The Power of Buttons,” a public workshop engaging the St. Louis community with a small but powerful public text: the pinback button. At the event, which took place at the Center of Contemporary Arts (COCA), local authors, WashU humanities PhD students and area nonprofits each hosted tables that showcased different forms of advocacy and local movements. They encouraged participants to think about how these histories intersected with their own struggles for change in their communities. The roughly 50 multigenerational attendees were also invited to design, create and take home their own buttons.

The Politics of Reproduction Studiolab

The Politics of Reproduction Studiolab, also funded by the Here and Next initiative, created an engaged space for students to learn about and develop projects with a community agency around the intersection between politics, gender, race and reproduction. Led by Shanti Parikh (African and African American Studies) and Denise Lieberman (WashU Law), graduate students and advanced undergraduates from Arts & Sciences, WashU Law and Brown School enrolled in “Sexual Health and the City” (fall) and “The Politics of Reproduction, Race and Power” (spring).

Against a rapidly evolving landscape of law, policy and advocacy efforts around reproductive choice, the courses set out to explore how a classroom experience can unfold when the topic is still in flux. In the classroom, Parikh and Lieberman led students through the historical, political and cultural contexts integral to understanding the moment. In the community, students interacted with organizations to learn about their needs and witnessed key events in the various fights for reproductive choice in Missouri, including a visit to the state capital in Jefferson City to advocate for comprehensive reproductive health for all Missourians.

“The output of the Tyson project was not merely an answer to the ‘scholarly problems’ I was dealing with. Rather, it was a way to explore more possibilities for thinking about the problems we might face in traditional scholarship.”

— Khashayar Shahriyari, Graduate Student, Department of Music

Initiatives: Innovations in the Humanities

For humanities scholars, experimenting with new methods and forms of knowledge is an important part of developing their research projects. These innovations must also spark new ways of training students, new metrics of assessing research and thoughtful reflections on our humanities values and communities. These case studies speak to our efforts to support innovations in how WashU faculty and students conduct humanities research as well as navigate the degree experience and tenure process.

Artistic Research at Tyson

The Center for the Humanities and Tyson Research Center, WashU’s environmental field station, hosted humanities graduate students in spring 2024 for a semester-long inquiry into the field of artistic research. The 2,000-acre wooded landscape prompted site-specific explorations on topics such as histories of war, interspecies humanities and the intersection of art and environmental activism.

With funding from the humanities center’s Redefining Doctoral Education in the Humanities (RDE) initiative (supported by the Mellon Foundation), ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow Anya Yermakova led a cohort of 13 graduate students through their engagements at Tyson.

Students presented their works in progress in a two-day onsite workshop and gathering. Via discussions, presentations and guided explorations, participants focused on the exchange of methods for including (and exposing) creative practice as complementary and fruitful to the critical and intellectual work within the university. Throughout the weekend, they were joined by members of the public and by invited guests Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Salomé Voegelin, leading scholars in the fields of sound studies, performance and artistic research methods.

Writing as Advocacy Roundtable

How do we connect writing and research with our values? How do we create communities of practice stemming from our scholarship? How do we write ourselves into thriving as humanities practitioners? The Writing as Advocacy Round Table gathered a diverse group of humanists who employ writing as a tool for advocacy of various forms. Together, they addressed this set of questions on connecting writing and scholarship to creative practice, community engagement and cause-driven work. The varied graduate school and career paths of the panelists — which included a doctoral student whose research drives both scholarly and artistic productions related to women and incarceration; a public scholar and humanist

working on community collaborations in the nonprofit world; and an associate professor of film and media studies and of comparative literature whose work promotes equity and justice in the digital cultural record — illustrated just how broadly these skills can be applied.

Kimberly Annas, a graduate student who helped organize the event, reflected how the workshop invited graduate students to “reframe our relationship with failure by learning to see failure as working toward something new.” She encouraged her fellow graduate students: “Don’t be afraid to play!”

View the roundtable discussion by scanning the QR code.

Rethinking Tenure and Promotion Assessment in the Humanities: A Blueprint for Transformation and Innovation

Identifying a need to rethink metrics, the Center for the Humanities assembled a group of national leaders to collaborate on ways humanities faculty and administrators can move beyond traditional requirements for tenure dossiers in the humanities such as monographs and articles. Participants at WashU were joined by renowned thought leaders from institutions and organizations including Kal Alston (Syracuse University and Imagining America National Advisory Board), Joy Connolly (president, American Council of Learned Societies) and Paula Krebs (executive director, Modern Language Association).

During the event, organized in partnership with the Program in Public Scholarship, participants discussed the systemic changes required to evaluate newer ways of doing humanities research — such as public humanities, digital humanities and creative practice — and allow scholars to produce exciting new work while moving through the tenure and promotion processes. This type of adaptation is essential for the health and future of the humanities as we search for new ways to engage with multiple publics and ensure equitable access to the processes of scholarly production to researchers from diverse backgrounds.

View any of the five panel discussions — Challenges, Opportunities, Snapshots of Innovation, Supporting Transformation and Next Steps — by scanning the QR code.

Initiatives

“What happens to literary imagination if/when machines can draw, on demand, probabilistic images from word descriptors?” asked AI symposium speaker Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal (University of Notre Dame). Here, AI software provides a visualization of a passage from Henry James’ The Golden Bowl, as Dhaliwal referenced in his talk: “He knew above all the extraordinary fineness of her flexible waist, the stem of an expanded flower, which gave her a likeness also to some long loose silk purse, well-filled with gold pieces, but having been passed empty through a finger ring that held it together. It was as if, before she turned to him, he had weighed the whole thing in his open palm and even heard a little the chink of the metal.”

Initiatives: Collaborative Humanities

Collaboration is a crucial process in the humanities, as scholars from different fields gather around shared research topics and draw from diverse disciplinary frames to approach crucial questions in our world today and to develop solutions. Given the importance of this work, the Center for the Humanities has provided ongoing resources to support collaboration around some of the most pressing topics in our community. These projects springboard collaboration to the next action-oriented level with targeted events, courses and programs.

The Humanities in the AI Future

AI technology is reconfiguring transdisciplinary collaborations and relationships, putting pressure on our ideas about labor, creativity and originality. Recognizing the need to center humanistic inquiry in conversations about how these tools should be taught and understood, a faculty group supported by the humanities center convened a symposium April 4–5 to spotlight the affordances of humanistic scholarship with and about artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The organizers — Claudia Carroll (Transdisciplinary Institute in Applied Data Sciences), Diane Lewis (Film and Media Studies), Gabrielle Kirilloff (English), Uluğ Kuzuoğlu (History), Raven Maragh-Lloyd (African and African American Studies) and Rebecca Wanzo (Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies) — selected four early career scholars to speak on their research. Drawing on work ranging from the evolving relationship between AI-generated and literary imagery, digital labor and the care economy, and the use of storytelling in AI tech development, the speakers modeled a series of humanistic approaches to understanding and using these culturally seismic technologies.

The symposium also included an informal session on AI and pedagogy, during which WashU and visiting faculty shared strategies for teaching with and about artificial intelligence in writing and media courses. Graduate students and postdocs also conferred directly with the invited scholars on developing humanistic projects and methods with artificial intelligence.

Arts & Sciences; the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Digital Transformations (Here and Next, Office of the Provost); and the Transdisciplinary Institute in Applied Data Sciences (TRIADS) all supported the event.

Reproductive Justice Working Group

The impact of the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — which held that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion — was felt immediately around the country and in Missouri’s own reproductive health community. While local organizations began to sort through the ethical and legal landscape for patients

and providers, the Reproductive Justice, Health, Rights (R3R) working group, supported by the Center for the Humanities, formed in order to draw together the efforts of faculty who have long prioritized work related to reproductive justice, including contributors from biomedical engineering, Latin American studies, law, political science, psychology, public health, social policy, sociology, and women, gender and sexuality studies.

Led by conveners Rachel Brown (Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies), Seanna Leath (Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences) and Zakiya Luna (Department of Sociology), working group members collaborate to generate ideas, build relationships with community partners, develop common research areas and draw from the expertise of people both at and beyond WashU, with the goal of launching a sustainable cross-school and cross-community endeavor. Importantly, the group draws on the rich history of reproductive justice, a concept emerging from and indebted to the embodied activism of women of color. With funding from WashU’s Office of the Provost and CRE2, the working group is currently planning a Global Reproductive Justice Symposium to be hosted in St. Louis in fall 2024.

Environmental Humanities Working Group

Launched in summer 2023 and supported via funding from Arts & Sciences and the Office of the Provost, the Environmental Arts & Humanities Working Group draws on the skills of humanists, artists and storytellers to advance environmental research. Because environmental questions cross disciplinary boundaries, working collaboratively is crucial to understanding the roots of environmental issues and raising awareness of approaches that can help address them.

With the support of the Center for the Humanities, this project’s working group includes Bret Gustafson (Anthropology); Derek Hoeferlin (Landscape Architecture); Diana Montaño (History); Patricia Olynyk (Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts) and Ila Sheren (Art History and Archaeology). These scholars bring a range of creative, historical and political expertise — including community-engaged research and courses, public writing, artistic practice and curation — and a shared commitment to those frontline spaces and peoples impacted by environmental crises.

In the next academic year, the working group will host a series of events and a curated exhibit on extractivism. Referring to the impacts of oil, mining, clear-cutting and other natural resource extraction, extractivism is closely tied to issues of colonialism, capitalism, state power, globalization and lifeways of rural and Indigenous communities in the U.S. and Latin America. Open to the public, this exhibit will bring together faculty and students as well as artists and creative practitioners making visible the impacts of extractivism on communities across the Americas. By connecting these efforts, the working group aims to model how global solidarity can produce local change.

McLeod Memorial Lecture on Higher Education

In her October 4 lecture “Community as Rebellion,” Lorgia García Peña, professor of Latinx studies at Princeton University, delivered a message of solidarity for faculty and students of color in the academy and advice for navigating the particular structures and pitfalls of the academic world. García Peña drew on her recent book, Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color, in which she invites readers — in particular Black, Indigenous, Latinx and Asian women — to engage in liberatory practices of boycott, abolition and radical community-building.

The annual James E. McLeod Memorial Lecture on Higher Education honors the esteemed vice chancellor of students, who died in 2011, and addresses the role of the liberal arts in higher education.

TALK HIGHLIGHT

Still we rise … and we are tired

Kia Lilly Caldwell, vice provost for faculty affairs and diversity, professor of African and African American studies, and Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholar

Earlier in the day, García Peña met with WashU’s Women of Color Faculty Network, a universitywide group convened by Kia Lilly Caldwell. Caldwell offered her own reflections on surviving academia as a woman of color on the humanities center’s blog, Human Ties. She dedicated this essay to JoAnne Epps (1951–2023), an American legal scholar and academic who was the first black woman appointed as president of Temple University.

Many of my Black women faculty colleagues are tired. I hear this sentiment repeatedly when I talk to colleagues from across the country. While openly speaking about fatigue is often taboo in academic spaces, the sense of burnout and devaluing of our contributions is real and runs deep among Black women faculty. This has been true for quite a while, and a decade or so ago, several prominent Black women scholars died within a short time of one another. This was a wake-up call for many of us about the demands of academic life, as well as the ways that un-wellness is often perpetuated in the academy. Sociologist Ruth Zambrana coined the term “Toxic Ivory Towers” to describe this phenomenon. The superwoman stereotype of Black women in our society and in the academy also discourages recognition of the extra service, work and burdens that Black women faculty often experience. The superwoman stereotype also strikes me as being very similar to the notion of rising against all odds and obstacles, though I doubt this is what Maya Angelou had in mind when she wrote her iconic poem “Still I Rise.” While Angelou’s poem was a tribute to Black women’s remarkable resilience, in today’s society, grit and resilience are expected from us, while care, concern and allyship are displayed toward us far less often.

My own experiences as a faculty member for nearly 25 years can attest to the demands — mentally, physically and psychically — that an academic career places on Black women. Research and personal testimonials have shown that other women of color often face similar demands and these largely owe to the intersectional dynamics of our lives within and outside of the academy. Before taking on my current role, I seriously considered whether to continue in an academic career. Having experienced many years of institutionalized racism at a former institution and being on the frontlines of pushing for institutional change had worn me down and tarnished my view of academic life. While academia affords many faculty, especially those with tenure, the opportunity to pursue scholarship and intellectual work that is gratifying and produces new knowledge, unfortunately, the contributions of women of color in academic spaces are often devalued, marginalized and erased. As the two-volume series Presumed Incompetent points out, these experiences foster the attrition of women of color from academia, beginning at the undergraduate level, and often take a toll on our mental and physical health … and we are tired. So, what can be done about this situation? Lorgia García Peña’s important book, Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color, highlights the importance of being in community and fighting the “only one” syndrome, which is essentially internalized tokenism, as women of color. I absolutely agree with this; being in community has been a lifesaver for me at critical points in my career. But it’s also not sufficient. We need systemic institutional change in higher education in order to ensure that Black women and other women of color have equitable experiences, whether we’re talking about hiring, promotion and tenure, grant and article reviews, or departmental climates. This will also help to ensure that women of color not only survive in academia but also thrive. For faculty and administrators from majority groups, including white women, women of color need you to be authentic allies and upstanders. What can you do to make policies and practices at your universities more equitable? How do your own behaviors and microaggressions impact women of color? Shifting the academic landscape to one that brings Black women and other women of color from the margins to the center is critical to our collective future in this historical moment. Making academic workplaces more welcoming to and equitable for women of color faculty will ultimately make our colleges and universities better overall. It will also help to make them more responsive to the needs of increasingly diverse student populations. May we all rise and thrive together.

Patricia Olynyk (center, Sam Fox School), moderated a discussion, “Culture and Environmental Crisis,” between Faculty Book Celebration keynote speaker Nicole Seymour (left) and Ursula Heise (right), two luminaries in the field of environmental humanities.

Hand pages

Professor of English, California State University, Fullerton

Faculty Book Celebration

Every year, the Center for the Humanities leads an effort to honor the newly published authors among the humanities faculty with the Faculty Book Celebration. Alongside a virtual and in-person display of these works, two of the new authors give a brief talk on their books, and a nationally recognized scholar-author gives a lecture on their recent work. The keynote speaker for this year’s event, held on Feb. 28, was Nicole Seymour, professor of English, California State University, Fullerton, whose work considers how literature and other cultural forms — from documentary film to stand-up comedy — mediate our relationship to environmental crisis.

The environmental humanities has become an important growing field, with scholars and practitioners investigating how humanities methods can help us understand and address urgent environmental issues. In her first event of the day, Seymour joined another visiting scholar, Ursula Heise, the Marcia H. Howard Chair in Literary Studies Department of English and Institute of the Environment & Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, for a wide-ranging panel discussion on the state of the field, which was moderated by Patricia Olynyk, the Florence and Frank Bush Professor in Art, Sam Fox School, “Culture and Environmental Crisis.”

Later in the afternoon, the Faculty Book Celebration kicked off with brief presentations on two new books by their WashU faculty authors: Ila Sheren, associate professor, Department of Art History and Archaeology (Border Ecology: Art and Environmental Crisis at the Margins) and Hayrettin Yücesoy, associate professor of Arabic and Islamic studies, Department of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies (Disenchanting the Caliphate: The Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought).

Seymour’s afternoon lecture, based on her recent book Glitter (Bloomsbury), offered an environmental-cultural history of the substance, contextualizing and challenging the recent backlash against it. Focusing on the tackiness of glitter — its physical stickiness as well as its metaphorical association with the vulgar — Seymour charted how glitter has served as a rallying symbol for the marginalized: the working class, people of color and queer communities.

Nicole Seymour,

through book

SPEAKER HIGHLIGHT

Glitter bombs and green queens: Nicole Seymour’s irreverent take on environmental humanities

Laura Perry, PhD, is the assistant director for research and public engagement in the Center for the Humanities.

You’ve engaged with efforts to connect environmental advocacy and humanities methods, like Climate Change Theatre Action. What draws you to projects like that one?

I have been a fan of Seymour’s work since graduate school, and a fan of glitter since middle school, so I was first in line to pick up her latest — and it does not disappoint. Glitter traces the activist tactic of glitter-bombing, the queer joys of glam, the class politics of perceived tackiness and excess, and glitter’s simultaneous relationships to natural glimmers and disposable plastics. In anticipation of her visit, I asked Seymour to share some of her current research interests and give us a preview of her talk.

One aspect of your writing that stands out is how you skillfully shift in tone throughout your books, from crisis to comedy. There are several moments in Glitter that made me laugh out loud! How do you think about your audience when you’re writing? Are there challenges (or joys) to writing for a series like Object Lessons, which imagines a more public readership?

Writing Glitter for a public audience felt very freeing — I let myself run totally wild, knowing that the serious posturing of academic writing wasn’t in effect. I tried to write in ways that gave me (and hopefully my audience) pleasure, using techniques like narrative present tense, personal anecdotes, listing, alliteration and even rhyming. I also tried to create pleasure around the writing process itself. So I selected one typeface that I found to be beautiful, in which I wrote the whole manuscript. Of course, it was ultimately published in the standard typeface they use for the whole book series, but for my two years of drafting I used Papryus. Just kidding! I used Avenir. I don’t recall how conscious I was of it at the time, but there’s obviously a connection between the arguably indulgent and frivolous nature of some of these writing modes and the indulgent and frivolous nature of glitter.

As a professor, I jump at any opportunity to help students feel empowered and connected to others who are “doing the work,” and Climate Change Theatre Action is perfect for that. Coinciding with the biannual UN climate summits, 50 professional playwrights from around the world write five-minute plays related to the climate crisis. Then anyone interested can access them upon request — teachers, activists, community theatre groups, whatever. I love showing students the spreadsheet of the new crop of plays and seeing the vast array of countries and Indigenous nations they represent. Then I let them pick out plays for us to read based on the keywords in the spreadsheet. I like giving them that kind of ownership over the curriculum. In the bigger picture, students see that imagination is crucial for inspiring climate action, and also how humanist forms like theater can help us process the emotions, like fear and hopelessness, that are stymieing that action.

Your work is entangled in so many different fields. Are there any emerging areas or topics that excite you in particular, whether in your own research or from other scholars?

It hit me the other day that, if we think in terms of the classical elements of earth, water, air and fire, we’ve just entered the “air” stage of environmental humanities scholarship. To back up for a second: a subfield called the “blue humanities” emerged several years ago in response to how environmental humanists were tending to privilege terrestrial landscapes and their representation — despite the fact that 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water. Then in the past three years or so, some really exciting books have insisted that we think about air: Nerea Calvillo’s Aeropolis: Queering Air in Toxicpolluted Worlds, Jean-Thomas Tremblay’s Breathing Aesthetics and Hsuan Hu’s The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics. Air is always part of our environment, so when and how do we notice it? How do different populations experience air differently? How can we represent such disparities? I think these are fascinating and important questions.

The full interview with Seymour can be found on the humanities center’s blog, Human Ties, at humanities.washu.edu.

New Books by Faculty in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences, 2023

Mary Jo Bang

Professor, Department of English

A Film in Which I Play Everyone: Poems (Graywolf Press)

“I’ve always wanted to find a place in a poem for Shakespeare’s stage direction in The Winter’s Tale: “Exit, pursued by a bear”! I failed to find room for that in this collection, but I did find a way — in “The Doctor’s Monster is Drowning” — to incorporate another favorite Shakespeare moment, this one from The Tempest: “The watch-dogs bark! Bow, wow.”

Elizabeth Bernhardt

Lecturer in Italian and French, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio (Amsterdam University Press)

“The story of Genevra Sforza is an important one — yet a challenging one to research since her traces were left spread thin in masses of 15th-century papers dispersed across Italy. The difficulties present in uncovering her life story in those such materials explains why nobody had studied her.”

Rebecca Copeland

Professor of Japanese Language and Literature, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Reading Desire in a New Generation of Japanese Women Writers, edited with Nina Cornyetz (Routledge)

Carl F. Craver

Professor of Philosophy and PhilosophyNeuroscience-Psychology, Department of Philosophy

Mind Design III, edited with John Haugeland and Colin Klein (MIT Press)

Carol Diaz-Granados

Research Associate, Department of Anthropology

Explanations in Iconography: Ancient American Indian Art, Symbol, and Meaning (editor) (Oxbow Books)

Nathan H. Dize

Assistant Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Antoine of Gommiers by Lyonel Trouillot, translated by Nathan Dize (Schaffner Press)

Amy Gais

Lecturer, Department of Political Science and Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities

The Coerced Conscience (Cambridge University Press)

“This is my first book, so not only did I hone my research expertise, but I learned about the process of writing a book. First, you start with your butt in the chair, getting words down onto the page, and messy first drafts. Then revise, revise, revise. Then sharpen a rough manuscript into a more polished final product. I am already underway on my second book, which has been much easier and exciting given all that I have learned about the process of writing a book from this first project.”

Matthias Göritz

Professor of Practice, Program in Comparative Literature

Die Sprache der Sonne (C.H. Beck)

“A generous grant by Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul, an institution of the German federal government, run by the German Embassy in Ankara and the Goethe-Institut, allowed me to live in Istanbul for four consecutive summers, access several archives in Turkey and highlight the role Istanbul played in fostering German intellectual thought that was sidelined by the Nazi regime.”

Steine aus dem Himmel by Tomaž Šalamun, translated by Matthias Göritz, Liza Linde and Monika Rinck (Suhrkamp) Mein Nachbar auf der Wolke, edited by Matthias Göritz, Amalija Maček and Aleš Šteger (Hanser)

Atemprotokolle. Gedichte by Aleš Šteger, translated by Matthias Göritz (Wallstein) Trapezherz. Gedichte by Volha Hapeyeva, translated by Matthias Göritz (Droschl)

Steve Hindle

Derek Hirst Endowed Professor of Early Modern British History, Department of History

The Social Topography of a Rural Community: Scenes of Labouring Life in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford University Press)

“I had the great good fortune to work with an extraordinary cartographer and designer, Matthew Enger, who digitally reconstructed the spatial dynamics of the Warwickshire community, which is the focus of the study. When I first saw his map of the occupational structure of the village, I could envisage for the first time what it might have been like to live there in the late 17th century.”

Ignacio Infante

Associate Professor, Program in Comparative Literature and Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

A Planetary Avant-Garde: Experimental Literature Networks and the Legacy of Iberian Colonialism (University of Toronto Press)

Uluğ Kuzuoğlu

Assistant Professor, Department of History

Codes of Modernity: Chinese Scripts in the Global Information Age (Columbia University Press)

Tabea Linhard*

Professor of Spanish and of Comparative Literature, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Unexpected Routes: Refugee Writers in Mexico (Stanford University Press)

“The book became what it is because all along I was thinking about how to place emotions on a map, which then led me to re-read the sources and compose the book in a certain way. This may sound like the old ‘the journey is the destination’ cliché — but even that one may be an interesting one to map.”

Paul Michael Lützeler

Rosa May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

Hermann Broch und die oesterrische modern (Brill)

Philip Maciak

Senior Lecturer, Department of English and Program in American Culture Studies

Avidly Reads Screen Time (New York University Press)

Angela Miller*

Professor, Department of Art History and Archaeology

Body Language: The Queer Staged Photographs of George Platt Lynes and PaJaMa (with Nick Mauss, edited by Anthony Lee) (University of California Press)

John Powers

Assistant Professor, Program in Film and Media Studies

Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture (Oxford University Press)

Martin Riker

Teaching Professor, Department of English

The Guest Lecture (Grove Atlantic)

“The Guest Lecture was started around the time my first novel was coming out, which was a hectic time, as are all times always. Fortunately, I had a wonderfully practical premise. It’s a book about an academic economist up all night in a dark hotel room worrying about her life. The whole novel takes place in her head, in fact she tries to not even move, so as not to wake her family sleeping around her. All novels are works of the imagination, of course, but this one actually takes place in the imagination, particularly in the world of insomnia, which was very convenient, since I also have insomnia (or did at the time, anyway), and the novel gave me something productive to work on while I lay there awake. Sleeplessness was no longer annoying, but research.”

FACULTY SPEAKER

Ila Sheren

Associate Professor, Department of Art History and Archaeology

Border Ecology: Art and Environmental Crisis at the Margins (SpringerLink)

“This book was conceived of initially during a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute, but it took shape with the funding and support of a year in residence at the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Advanced Study. … The manuscript was finished and under advance contract in spring of 2020 but we all know what happened (cue sad trombone). It was a labor of love to get it published in 2023, but I’m glad it found a home!”

Nicole Svobodny

Senior Lecturer, Program in Global Studies

Nijinsky’s Feeling Mind: The Dancer Writes, the Writer Dances (Lexington Books)

“I completely immersed myself in the year 1919. It was fascinating to trace many of today’s issues back to that time. In terms of sheer archival delight, I enjoyed discovering Nijinsky’s verbal descriptions in his unpublished dance notation, like this one: ‘Stands in the Yard. Snowing.’”

Lynne Tatlock

Hortense and Tobias Lewin

Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

German Literature as a Transnational Field of Production, 1848-1919 (edited with Kurt Beals) (Boydell and Brewer)

Mark Valeri

Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves

Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics, Danforth Center on Religion and Politics

The Opening of the Protestant Mind: How Anglo-American Protestants Embraced Religious Liberty (Oxford University Press)

“Part of the project was sparked by the discovery of a deck of playing cards produced in 1670 in London and held at the Huntington. The cards had descriptions of the world’s religions with fantastic drawings of people from different parts of the world: 4 continents (suits), with 48 different countries.”

Adia Wingfield

Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor in Arts & Sciences, Department of Sociology

Gray Areas: How the Way We Work Perpetuates Racism and What We Can Do to Fix It (HarperCollins)

Helina Woldekiros

Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology

The Boundaries of Ancient Trade: Kings, Commoners, and the Aksumite Salt Trade of Ethiopia (University Press of Colorado)

“Initiating the writing journey of my book entailed traversing the scorching Afar desert, one of the harshest places on Earth. In this challenging terrain, blocks of salt were intricately fastened to camels and donkeys, enduring hundreds of miles along a trade route forged by thousands of caravaners for nearly two millennia. Similar to the resilience displayed by these hardworking caravaners, crafting my first book proved to be a demanding yet gratifying expedition, affording me the privilege to narrate the remarkable tale of those whose toil contributed to shaping an empire.”

Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History, Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies

Disenchanting the Caliphate: The Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought (Columbia University Press)

“Crafting a book in the humanities is a formidable undertaking, akin to navigating a stormy sea sometimes without sight of land, marked by myriad emotional peaks and valleys. It is also a humbling journey as it puts you directly eye to eye with great minds through their writing, analysis and insight.”

Christin Zühlke

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Holocaust Literature, Program in Comparative Literature

New Microhistorical Approaches to an Integrated History of the Holocaust (edited with Frédéric Bonnesoeur and Hannah Wilson) (De Gruyter)

Faculty Book Celebration speaker Hayrettin Yücesoy spoke on his newest book, a new account of political discourse in Islamic history by examining Abbasid imperial practice, illuminating the emergence and influence of a vibrant secular tradition.

*Former Faculty Fellows

Event Cosponsorships

Every year, the Center for the Humanities co-sponsors humanities and humanistic social sciences events with departments, programs and academic initiatives at WashU.

“Weird Barbie: Feminist, Queer, and Industry Issues in Greta Gerwig’s Blockbuster,” Sept. 21, 2023. Organized by the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

“¿Quién soy? Y ¿Quiénes somos?: A Panel Discussion with Latine Poets,” Oct. 12, 2023. Organized by the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Equity.

“Roscoe Mitchell: Sound and Vision,” Oct. 13, 2023. Organized by the Department of Music.

Conference and round table with novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Oct. 30, 2023. Organized by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

“Eisler on the Beach: A Communist Family Constellation Therapy,” Jürgen Kuttner, German radio presenter, cultural critic, theater director and artist, Nov. 2, 2023. Organized by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures.

Meet-and-Greet with Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain Gang All-Stars, Jan. 31, 2024. Organized by the Center for the Literary Arts.

“Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant,” Curtis Chin, filmmaker and memoirist, Feb. 7, 2024. Organized by the Department of English.

Politics and Secularity in the Early Islamic World Lecture Series, Feb. 19 and April 15, 2024. Organized by the Department of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.

“Monalisa in NYC: Club Culture and Trans Friendship,” Cristián Opazo, associate professor of Latin American cultural studies, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, March 8, 2023. Organized by the Latin American Studies program and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

“An anecdotic topography of chance: Una topografía anecdótica del azar”; “Book Making Workshop: Abstract Comics” and public reading, Veronica Gerber Bicecci, March 18–20, 2024. Organized by University Libraries.

“Insurgent Literacy on the Aymara Altiplano: Following the Paper Trails,” Brooke Larson, professor emerita of history, Stony Brook University, March 21, 2024. Organized by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

“Humanitarian Danger and Palestinian Life in Gaza,” Ilana Feldman, professor of anthropology, history, and international affairs, George Washington University, March 27, 2024. Organized by the Department of Anthropology.

“On Palestinian Literature: Past, Present and Future,” Beyond Discipline Lecture Series, April 9, 2024. Organized by the Program in Comparative Literature.

What a cube, a drop and a wave taught me about creativity, communication and community

By starting with a common set of nonword symbols, the participants in the Abstract Comic workshop suddenly found they could speak the same language — despite their diverse backgrounds and disparate ideas, says graduate student (and new comic artist) Bailey Willden. Scan the code to read her reflections about the March 19 event, “Book Making Workshop: Abstract Comics” on the Human Ties blog.

Read the article by scanning the QR code.

Center for the Humanities: A Community of Scholars

Faculty Fellows | BECHS-Africa Fellow | ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow

Graduate Student Fellows | Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellows

Fannie Bialek Faculty Fellow

Elizabeth Hunter Faculty Fellow

Anca Parvulescur Faculty Fellow

Anya Plutynski Faculty Fellow

Lori Watt Faculty Fellow

Hayrettin Yücesoy Faculty Fellow

Robin Berghoff BECHS-Africa Fellow

Anya Yermakova ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow

Heesoo Cho Graduate Student Fellow

Kaché Claytor Graduate Student Fellow

Yuan Kevin Gao Graduate Student Fellow

Ann Marie Jakubowski Graduate Student Fellow

Salvador Lopez Rivera Graduate Student Fellow

Xuela Zhang Graduate Student Fellow

Andrew de las Alas Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Mary Rose Bell Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Jeffrey Camille Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Julia Cleary Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Dylan Maya-Tudor Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Lena Levey Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Melina Marin Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Omaer Naeem Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Kayla Harrington Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Joy Hu Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Aja Topps-Harjo Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Violet Walker Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Cecilia O’Gorman Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow

Nash Overfield Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow Fellows

“Religious writing on mystery and spiritual opacity often describes so well the kinds of uncertainties that are elsewhere political and ethical problems,” Faculty Fellow Fannie Bialek says. “I think these kinds of abstract, spiritual writings often allow for greater political and ethical imagination, and provide ways of thinking about what you don’t know as realms of possibility instead of problems to be solved. Heschel’s Sabbath is a political text in this way.”

Photo of Abraham Joshua Heschel via Wikimedia Commons

The politics of time: The lessons of Sabbath for seeking justice

Fannie Bialek

Assistant Professor, Danforth Center on Religion and Politics

“Rereading Sabbath: Aspiration, Urgency, and Critique in Heschel’s Time and Ours”

In 1951, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel published a slim volume on the observance of the Sabbath, a weekly withdrawal from workaday concerns for time spent in spiritual communion. Almost 75 years later, Fannie Bialek is taking a fresh view of The Sabbath, revisiting it as not only a work of religious thought but a source of radical political imagination resonant with struggles against racial injustice, income inequality and climate change today.

Briefly, what is your book about?

The book is about how what Heschel calls the “aspirations of time” can reframe contemporary political thinking about vulnerability, injustice and motivation for change.

Heschel argues that the Jewish Sabbath is a realm of time, distinct from the realm of space, where we live the other six days of the week. In the realm of space, our aspirations are competitive: You and I can never occupy precisely the same space, so our projects in the realm of space are defined by jostling for possession, security and control. But time can be spent together — we can share time fully, in a way we can never fully share space. That defines the aspirations of time differently: as Heschel puts it, not to have, but to be; not to own, but to give; not to control, but to share; not to subdue, but to be in accord.

I interpret this description of the different aspirations of time and space as a powerful political challenge, emerging from the iterative practice of Sabbath. The weekly Sabbath interrupts the aims of our competitive lives with the possibilities of time. This interruption prompts us to question our lives in the other six days by the light of Sabbath time. What we see, I argue, is that forms of injustice that seem intractable or irremediable by the rules of competitive space may be better approached as injustices in and of time. We also see that a significant challenge of ethics and politics is the use, and misuse, of urgency as the motivation to address injustice and other needs for change — a question of motivation that resonates particularly with the fight against climate change. What is an example of how the focus on time changes an understanding of injustice?

A prophetic call to respond to thefts of time as well as space, and to attend to ongoing injustice as a dimension of injustice and not just a greater or lesser quantity of it, has animated many recent revivals of discussions of reparations as a response to the structural injustices perpetrated against Black Americans.

Some of these injustices are thefts of aspiration: The domination or destruction of a person’s ability to aspire, or the effort to dominate others in this way, as I argue was perpetrated by the enslavers of Africans and their descendants in the United States. Understanding the injustice of enslavement in terms of the attempt to steal aspiration and not only labor suggests that repair must be sought for more than material thefts. Others are injustices of disproportionate vulnerability: the unjust distribution of vulnerability that accompanies the injustice and horror of violence perpetrated on members of persecuted groups. I argue that Black Americans’ vulnerability to police violence is its own injustice in this way and that movements against police violence must also attend to disproportionate vulnerabilities to it.

Modernist physiognomy

Anca Parvulescu

Liselotte Diekmann Professor of Comparative Literature, Department of English

“Modernist Faces: Physiognomy and Facial Form”

Though now recognized as a pseudoscience, in the 18th and 19th centuries, physiognomy — the practice of studying the distribution of facial features for signs of character and temperament — was highly influential in visual culture and literature. According to the theory, traits such as honesty or criminality are identifiable via physical markers such as the shape of one’s jaw or the pattern of one’s hairline. Leveraging this effective shorthand, authors incorporated descriptions of these features in their works as clues for their readers to decode.

Even as modernist writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries self-consciously turned away from earlier literary practices in an effort to “make it new,” the focus on physicality, in particular the human face, continued. “While many modernist authors rejected physiognomy as an anchor for the construction of literary characters, a version of physiognomy remained operative in modernism,” Anca Parvulescu says.

Briefly, what is your book about?

The book offers a cultural history of the human face, with a focus on literary modernism. Modernist authors of the early 20th century claimed that they could see reality with new eyes. I argue that the paradigmatic object of modernist vision was the face. I trace a range of literary experiments that tried to reframe the face, so we can see it anew.

How did you select the writers you’re looking at — Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein and Kōbō Abe?

I work with a canonical archive. Woolf, Mann, Proust and Stein are central figures in modernist studies. I go to them because I am making an argument about the core of transatlantic modernist culture and its afterlives. At the same time, I read these canonical authors’ work with an eye to foregrounding silences, things legible on the margins of what they articulate. Finally, Kōbō Abe’s novel allows me to raise the question of how the form of the face I identify in transatlantic modernism resonates in a global context, in this case in Japan.

Why do you think there is so much attention to the face (as opposed to any other physical feature) in these works? What is the draw to human faces in particular?

In literary terms, the face figures a subject. If our desire is to project a person behind the words on the page that describe a literary character, a face (whether described in the text or imagined by a reader) short-circuits this desire. That being said, other objects can function as faces — hands, for example, or landscapes.

In the age of facial-recognition technology, what does your project say about what it means to “read a face”?

I hope my project serves as a reminder of the risks in classifying human beings according to the geometry of the face. Contemporary facial recognition technologies promise to automatize vision; this promise has a physiognomic pedigree. My book shows that these new technologies embed a long history of the face, including elements of physiognomy revised in the modernist period.

Ensor aux masques (Self-Portrait with Masks), 1899, by James Ensor, courtesy Menard Art Museum, Komaki, Japan

The science and philosophy of mental health

Anya Plutynski Professor of Philosophy

The National Committee for Mental Hygiene published a 25-page guide to accompany a traveling 1913 exhibit on mental hygiene. Public domain, courtesy the Wellcome Collection

“Making Mental Health”

Anya Plutynski, a historian and philosopher of science, is currently writing a book on the history of the concept of mental health, starting with early 20th-century advocates of “mental hygiene.” Her book aims to shed new light on larger debates in the philosophy of science concerning evidence, explanation and the role of values in science.

Briefly, what is your book about?

I’m writing about the history of the concept of mental health and of the history of ideals for a science of mental health promotion. Different scientists and clinicians have endorsed very different ideals for a science and practice of mental health promotion over the course of the 20th century. Mental health research is a fascinating case study for exploring questions about science and values, because it’s a context where reliance on subjective reports, individual case studies and value-laden ideals like “resilience” or “emotional stability” seem impossible to avoid.

When and in what context did the idea of “mental health” become widely popular?

This is a tricky question to answer because analogous concepts were “widely popular” in the early 20th century. “Mental hygiene” was a popular topic of concern in the early 20th century, well into the 1940s and ’50s. The concept of mental health in clinical research has become progressively “narrower.”

Clinical research today often simply identifies mental health with absence of symptoms of mental illness, in contrast to a more expansive concept of the sort endorsed by many “mental hygienists.”

Your last book, Explaining Cancer: Finding Order in Disorder, examines conceptual and methodological challenges that arise in cancer research. How did you move from cancer to psychology? What drew your interest to this particular area of human health?

Some of the same issues are at stake in both domains: how we define our goals in clinical care, what counts as good evidence for effective interventions and when or how values should play a role, whether in diagnosis and treatment decisions. I turned to mental health in part because I found it fascinating, and in part because while there’s lots of philosophical work about mental illness, there is relatively little on mental health. Alleviation of symptoms of disorder is the typical goal of randomized clinical trials for most talk therapies, and there are protocols that work for these purposes. However, what many clinicians do in therapy is not reducible to following a protocol, and in many ways not like what physicians do in treating physical illness. Their work is far more clientspecific and ranges over a variety of goals — identifying and communicating about emotions, resolving conflict, mourning loss, identifying and healing trauma or simply gaining some critical distance on one’s life. Psychotherapists are more like physical therapists — developing capacities to prevent symptoms from arising in the first place. Looking to the history of the science of mental health can help us get some critical distance from, or rethink our presuppositions about, both mental health and what counts as good science in this domain.

In digital worlds and on physical stages, directors invite audiences

Elizabeth Hunter Assistant Professor, Performing Arts Department

“Acting the Part: Audience Participation in Performance”

What happens when we inhabit the world of a famous story — and the story seeps into our own? That’s the question at the heart of Elizabeth Hunter’s book-in-progress. By analyzing performances of familiar works in four 21st-century contexts — a reconstructed historical playhouse, open-world theater, virtual reality and augmented reality — her book proposes the new theory of “enactive spectatorship,” which describes the sense of being cast in an archetypal role, as an audience member, in a live retelling of a well-known story.

How is “enactive spectatorship” different from active participation?

Audience participation is a part of any live theatrical production. Behaviors like paying attention, laughing in the right spots or clapping at the end are all part of going to a show. However, the last 20 years of Western theater have seen a rise in productions with more extensive participation. Audiences might perambulate freely through a designed space, for example, or find an actor inviting them to hold a prop or say something aloud.

Existing scholarship has tended to consider audience participation “meaningful” only when it involves co-authoring or changing the unfolding story in some way. But “changing the story” does not describe what happens when audiences

participate in a production of a story that is canonical (that is, highly recognizable as culturally significant to certain groups). I am interested in productions that attempt both of these goals: participation that registers as meaningful and a portrayal of a canonical story. Productions like these foster a sense of enacting a familiar archetype — hence, enactive spectatorship.

Help us imagine the experience of attending a performance that encourages enactive spectators.

One of the reasons I analyze physical contexts, like the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London, as well as digital, like the social virtual reality production Tempest, is that the dynamic I’m tracing does not rely on specific technologies. Rather, it arises from certain production conditions. I focus on four of the most effective and durable of these conditions: a historically resonant site, a canonical source, immersivity and a production-specific economy that rewards some kinds of participation and discourages others.

It can be helpful to think of these as levers — and to shape what audience members do and when, producers can pull on these levers with varying intensity. For example, the reconstructed Globe pulls hard on the lever of historical resonance. With a location in Bankside, site of Shakespeare’s original playhouse, and building materials that were as authentic as possible, the new Globe feels very much like a cathedral on holy grounds. This historical resonance invites playgoers to enact the archetype of “worshipper.”

Importantly, the quality of enactivity is both neutral and unavoidable. Producers who invite participation can leverage it toward problematic or beneficial ends. A central goal of this project, then, is to provide a road map for the responsible management of this important quality of participation.

Elizabeth Hunter’s book examines the methods producers use to enlist audience members in live retellings of familiar stories.

The caliph’s counselor

Hayrettin Yücesoy

Associate Professor, Department of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies

Tell us about the transition between the Umayyad and Abbasid administrations.

Ibn al-Muqaffa lived during a pivotal period, witnessing the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate in 750 CE and the rise of the Abbasid dynasty, marking a shift in the center of power and ushering in a new era of “Islamic civilization.”

In such circumstances, Ibn al-Muqaffa wrote his epistle to help stabilize the new empire and structure it on solid foundations. This treatise is the very first document of a theoretical discourse on empire-building in Arabic literature.

Who would have been the readers of al-Muqaffa’s political writings?

Like the ancient Indic Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Machiavelli’s The Prince, the treatise at the heart of Yücesoy’s book demonstrates the common human concern for a better world and the value of struggling to achieve it.

Illustration from an edition of Kalila and Dimna, published in Egypt circa 1310. U.S. Library of Congress courtesy World Digital Library

“The Monarch’s Counsellors: Ibn al-Muqaffa’s Epistle on Empire Building”

Few in the eighth century understood the position of the caliph — the Abbasid Empire’s supreme leader — better than Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa, a Persian courtier and thinker who, through his writings, influenced the courts of two caliphates. Ibn al-Muqaffa used his position as a scholar and a trusted adviser to promote a vision of governance that prized stability, rewarded merit and, different from many of his contemporaries, was rooted in practical and secular reasoning.

With his new book project, Hayrettin Yücesoy explores in depth one of those works: a treatise for a new ruler who just won enormous power by force of arms. The questions he faced — who to trust, how to maintain authority and deter potential challengers, and what to do to govern well — are as relevant today as they were in then.

Who was Ibn al-Muqaffa?

An ambitious and talented individual, Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa was a high-level secretary in the courts of Umayyad and early Abbasid rulers. Ibn al-Muqaffa was part of the mawālī, the conquered non-Arab peoples during the caliphal expansion in the seventh century. They were given a lesser social status through a “contract” of clientage, where certain peninsular Arabic-Muslim tribes were considered their guardians. Due to his background and work, he faced the challenge of being simultaneously the elite and the Other.

His epistle, although written for the caliph and professionals in his chamber, has transcended its original audience over the centuries. It was placed in an anthology in the ninth century and quoted numerous times in various literature, read by rulers, administrators, scholars and literate readers up until today. But it has yet to be made accessible to the Englishspeaking readers, which this book hopes to achieve.

What will readers find in your book, which will present an up-to-date critical edition of its Arabic original and an English translation?

My book showcases a remarkable representative of the idea of siyasa as the art of practicing governance through alleviating problems by normalized and agreeable means. It also challenges the common narrative of secularism as both modern and Eurocentric. Finally, it engages the concerns of subaltern studies by showing the readers how this subaltern bureaucrat labored to reorient the empire in a direction that accommodated the sociocultural backgrounds of non-Arab (even nonMuslim) elite.

international relations

Lori Watt

Associate Professor, Department of History

“International Relations in Theory and Practice: The Life of Sadako Ogata (1927–2019)”

The post-Cold War refugee crises of the 1990s required that she act differently from her predecessors and presented her with tough decisions. Should the UN Refugee Agency collaborate with military forces, including the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and NATO in Yugoslavia, inviting an accusation of the militarization of humanitarianism? Should they help civilians leave their homes in the former Yugoslavia, thereby facilitating ethnic cleansing, or force them to remain in the midst of conflict? Should they provide humanitarian aid to refugees in camps located on the borders of Rwanda, even if perpetrators of the genocide were among the recipients of that aid?

As United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata was known for her on-the-ground presence, such as this visit to a camp for Rwandan refugees in what was then Zaire in February 1995. Photo by P. Moumtzis/UNHCR

As the first woman, the first academic and the first Japanese person to serve as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Sadako Ogata led the UN Refugee Agency’s efforts in Iraq, the Balkans, Africa’s Great Lakes region and Afghanistan. Later, she was the first president of the $16 billion Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), an organization affiliated with Japan’s Foreign Ministry. How Ogata came to wield such influence — a “five-foot giant” of international affairs — is the intriguing tale Lori Watt is telling in her book project.

Briefly, what is your book about?

My book is a social biography of Japan’s best-known international leader of the late 20th century, the diplomat Sadako Ogata. In telling her life story, I analyze the factors that facilitated her professional success, as a scholar of international relations, as UNHCR and as president of JICA, which is the organization that distributes Japan’s foreign aid. An elite family background, postwar U.S.–Japan relations and new opportunities for women contributed, as did Ogata’s renowned leadership abilities.

How did Ogata approach her role as UNHCR?

Ogata was a professor of international relations and dean at Sophia University in Tokyo when the General Assembly approved her appointment as UNHCR in 1991. Her new job provided the opportunity to test her theoretical knowledge of foreign policy decision-making in the real world.

As the first commissioner to brief the Security Council, Ogata urged member states and other bureaucrats to act more decisively in devising political solutions to conflict, thereby reducing the number of refugees and the stateless, and to seek solutions from the ground up. She herself spent more time in the field than any of her predecessors, with her ears open to local solutions.

Can you give an example of Ogata’s leadership?

One dramatic moment took place on Feb. 17, 1993, when she abruptly announced the suspension of aid to desperate refugees in BosniaHerzegovina because all three warring parties — the Bosnian Serbs, the Croats and the Muslim-led Bosnian government — were impeding its delivery.

She later explained that although she was very concerned about the civilians, the level of politicization of relief work had crossed an intolerable threshold. Aid deliveries resumed five days later, and her decision earned her the respect of people within the agency.

Newspaper headlines today show that the politicization and risks of humanitarianism are still with us. But Ogata had clearly defined principles and the courage to follow them, an inspiring story I look forward to sharing with my readers.

BECHS-Africa Fellowship

Now in its fifth year, the BECHS-Africa Fellowship continued its exchange among early-career humanities scholars from the University of Ghana, American University in Cairo, Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and WashU. Backed by funding from the Mellon Foundation, fellows from participating institutions spend a semester in residence, focusing on a research project and tapping into the resources and networks afforded by the host university.

Esther Viola Kurtz, WashU

Esther Viola Kurtz, assistant professor of ethnomusicology in the Department of Music, spent the fall 2023 semester in residence with the University of Ghana’s (Legon) Department of Dance Studies. She is a scholar of the Afro-Brazilian musical fight-dance-game called capoeira Angola.

During her fellowship, Kurtz worked on an article related to capoeira Angola’s practice of call and response — the mechanisms whereby sound summons sound and movement, movement calls for sounds, and bodies call and respond to one another — and how these calls and responses resonate beyond moments of musical and bodily interplay. She argues that call and response is not only a musical trope but also an ethical practice, and therefore the musical-bodily calls of capoeira summon practitioners to assume long-term responsibilities. Doing so, they enter ethical relationships with one another and the broader Black community of backland Bahia.

Kurtz also co-convened a symposium aimed at stimulating conversations around how to better integrate music and dance studies, “Interrelations: African/Diasporic Music, Dance, and Collaboration,” with her mentor in the Department of Dance

Studies, Kwashie Kuwor, PhD. The interconnections of music and dance in African and African diasporic forms have long been recognized, Kurtz says, but music and dance studies remain largely siloed: “This division partitions the senses and further marginalizes African/ diasporic practices and scholars.” To address these issues, the symposium convened 12 scholars, based in Africa, the diaspora, Europe and North America who work on the interrelations of music/sound and dance/movement from African and African diasporic perspectives.

Robyn Berghoff, Stellenbosch University (South Africa)

The humanities center played host to linguist Robyn Berghoff, lecturer from Stellenbosch University (South Africa) during the fall 2023 semester. Berghoff is a psycholinguist interested in language acquisition as well as bilingual language representation and processing. During her semester in St. Louis, Berghoff planned an experiment to investigate how certain linguistic factors (e.g., sound and spelling regularities) affect how people learn complex grammatical gender systems. It will form part of her larger project, which uses experimental psycholinguistic methods to examine the acquisition of isiXhosa (a South African Bantu language). Relatedly, together with a collaborator, she worked on a paper on linguistic and geographic diversity in psycholinguistic research. They are examining where high-impact psycholinguistic research is being conducted and what languages are being studied.

Left: Robyn Berghoff (Stellenbosch University); right: Esther Viola Kurtz (WashU, at right) with Kwashie Kuwor (University of Ghana)

ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow

Anya Yermakova

Anya Yermakova continued at the Center for the Humanities in her role as the 2022–24 Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow. The fellowship is funded by a program from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) that supports recent PhDs in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Yermakova is a multidisciplinary scholar and artist, having earned a PhD in history of science and in critical media practice from Harvard University in 2021.

In their second year, Yermakova engaged graduate students in course- and project-based work on artistic research, a form of art and inquiry that uses the tools and methods of artistic practice to explore a research question and/or the tools and methods of research to create art.

Yermakova guided a group of 13 graduate students through a process of creating site-specific artistic research at Tyson Research Center during the spring semester (see more on page 15). Their culminating experience included a performance, using the space both inside and outside of a WWII-era bunker, by Yermakova (accordion, piano and foot percussion) and fellow musicians Marina Kifferstein (violin) and Florent Ghys, PhD (acoustic bass and electronics), “Listening Into: Bunkers, Bodies, In-betweens” on April 14. Following the performance, the artists led a discussion about the interplay of creative practice and critical inquiry in the performers’ own work and as witnessed in the performance. They also discussed the role of artistic research with/in the university and how scholars and practitioners can advocate for the value of their work.

In the spring semester, Yermakova also taught a seminar, “Topics in Embodied Communication: Listening.” The course — which was cross-listed in performing arts, music, comparative literature and philosophy-neuroscience-psychology — explored the nature of human and nonhuman auditory systems, as well as multimodal forms of listening (such as vibration), through a variety of theoretical perspectives. Working “in studio,” which included a music studio, a dance studio and the environment, students studied the sensing capabilities of more-than-human organisms as well as theoretical perspectives from sound studies, critical improvisation and history of science.

Anya Yermakova gave a performance and discussed the practice of artistic research at Tyson Research Center.

Graduate Student Fellows

The Center for the Humanities offers WashU graduate students writing dissertations in humanities disciplines the opportunity to apply for one of six competitively awarded Graduate Student Fellowships each academic year, providing a $5,000 stipend for a onesemester residential fellowship. While working at the humanities center in their own office, Graduate Student Fellows actively participate in the center’s intensive, interdisciplinary intellectual environment, discussing their research with the Faculty Fellows in residence, other WashU humanities faculty and invited guests.

Fall 2023

Ann Marie Jakubowski, Department of English

“Towards a Poetics of Conversion: Religion, Modernism, and Literary Form”

Salvador Lopez Rivera, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (French) and Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

“The France No One Cares About: Coming-of-Age Narratives of PostIndustrial France”

Xuela Zhang, Program in Comparative Literature (International Writers Track)

“Splitting the Atom of Language: The Question of Untranslatability and the Making of Anglophone Modernist Poetry”

Spring 2024

Heesoo Cho, Department of History

“The Making of the Mental and Material Map of the Pacific Ocean in Early America, 1740–1819”

Kaché Claytor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish)

“Mother Earth: Black Women and Environmental (In)Justice in the Pacific Coast of Colombia”

Yuan Kevin Gao, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

“Corporeal Technology: Hydraulic Engineering and the Political Aesthetic of Labor in China, 1952–1993”

Dispatches from the ‘other’ France In 2014, Édouard Louis published his groundbreaking autobiographical novel about growing up gay in an industrial town, a rare tale of working-class French life. As French literature scholar Salvador Lopez Rivera relates, Louis is part of a new generation of French writers making sure these stories don’t get left out.

Read the article by scanning the QR code.

Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellows

Every spring, five to seven WashU sophomores are admitted into the Merle Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellowship, a two-year seminar in which they conduct a humanities-oriented research project under the supervision of a faculty mentor. Their work is published in Slideshow, the research journal of the Kling Fellowship.

Class of 2024

Mary Rose Bell

“How Could One Express in Words These Emotions of the Body?”: Phenomenal Mental States and the Reader-Text Relationship in To the Lighthouse

English and Philosophy-NeurosciencePsychology majors

Claudia Carroll (TRIADS) and Becko Copenhaver (Philosophy), mentors

Julia Cleary, Class of 2024

“Racial Bias in Voir Dire: Case Law and Community Reactions”

Political Science major; Religion and Politics, and Legal Studies minors

Amy Gais (Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities), mentor

Kayla Harrington

“Black Girlhood: Adultification Bias in the Education System”

Psychological and Brain Sciences major; Legal Studies minor

Lori Markson (Psychological and Brain Sciences), mentor

Dylan Maya-Tudor

“Revolutionary Solidarity and CrossContinental Connectivities: Vietnam and Latin America from the Cold War to COVID”

International Affairs and Latin American Studies majors

Steven Hirsch (Global Studies), mentor

Omaer Naeem

“A Vignette of Resistance in Militant Pakistan: Analyzing Iqbal Bano’s ‘Hum Dekhenge’”

International Affairs major; South Asian Languages and Civilizations and Asian American Studies minors

Shefali Chandra (Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies), mentor

Nash Overfield

“Seditious Doctrines: R. Mugo Gatheru and Representations of Pan-Africanism in the Cold War”

African and African American Studies major; Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies minor

Timothy Parsons (History), mentor

Violet Walker

“Taking the Form: Magical Sex Changes, Transgender Identity, and Gender Embodiment”

English Literature, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, majors

Amy Cislo (Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies) and Beth Windle (English), mentors

Class of 2025

Andrew de las Alas

“Gateway to the East: Filipino Americans in a Black and White City”

Global Studies major; Sociology, Asian American Studies minors

Chris Eng (English), mentor

Jeffrey Camille

“On His Monstrous Form: How the State Engenders Men as Agents of ConflictRelated Sexual Violence”

Global Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies majors

Rachel Brown (Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies), mentor

Joy Hu

“The Rush for Digital Gold: Regulatory Reactions to Cryptocurrency and New Financial Frontiers”

Economics major; American Culture Studies and Finance minors

Gaetano Antinolfi (Economics) and Dave Walsh (American Culture Studies), mentors

Lena Levey

“Noah’s Ark in Contemporary Apocalyptic Literature”

Religious Studies major Writing and Spanish minors

Victoria Thomas (English), mentor

Melina Marin

“Navigating the Scare-ibbean: Tracing the Socio-Political Legacy of Monstrous Figures in the Caribbean”

English Literature and French majors

Biology minor

J. Dillon Brown (English), mentor

Cecilia O’Gorman

“Balzac’s Sarrasine and the Problem of Trans Hermeneutics”

English Literature and Comparative Literature majors

Jami Ake (Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities) and Tili Boon Cuillé (Romance Languages and Literatures), mentors

Aja Topps-Harjo

“Dismantling the Master’s House with the Master’s Tools: An Examination of Black Women Scholars’ Pursuit of Equity within the Legal System”

Psychological and Brain Sciences and African and African American Studies majors

Seanna Leath (Psychological and Brain Sciences), mentor

Workshops, Information Sessions and Retreats

Proposal Writing Information Session and Workshop

The annual Proposal Writing Information Session began on Thurs., Aug. 24, with a roundtable discussion featuring a lineup of staff who facilitate external funding submissions as well as recent faculty award winners, which included Bill Courtney, Research Development and Administration, Arts & Sciences; Nicole Moore, Office of Research Development; Nora Kelleher, Office of Foundation Relations; Jessica Rosenfeld, associate professor of English and associate chair, Department of English; and Tili Boon Cuillé, professor of French and comparative literature.

Later that week, a half dozen faculty who were preparing to submit proposals in fall 2023 or spring 2024 workshopped their proposals with small peer groups. Over the course of two meetings in successive weeks, participants gave critical readings of one another’s proposals and provided feedback, which members used to revise their proposals. Past participants have noted that this exercise is particularly useful in helping them to clarify their proposals for readers outside their specific academic field, as grant readers often are. The small groups were led by Tabea Linhard, director of the Program in Global Studies and professor of Spanish and of comparative literature; and Peter Kastor, the Samuel K. Eddy Professor in the Department of History and associate vice dean of research in humanities, humanistic social sciences, and creative practice in Arts & Sciences.

Over the years, the workshop has been instrumental to the success of many winning proposals. Most recently, in spring 2024, workshop participant Uluğ Kuzuoğlu, assistant professor of history, was awarded one of eight early career fellowships nationally by the American Council of Learned Societies. Part of the Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies, the competitive fellowship program awards recent PhDs up to $45,000 to carry out research and writing on China’s histories, cultures, geopolitics, art and global impact. Kuzuoğlu’s project explores artificial intelligence and pseudoscience in the Sinosphere.

Scholarly Writing Retreat

Associate Director Talia Dan-Cohen (Anthropology) and Nicholas Koziolek (Philosophy) co-convened the 10th annual Scholarly Writing Retreat, May 14–24.

Nearly 40 faculty members, postdocs and graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences gathered in the humanities center offices and conference rooms to kick-start their summer writing in a motivated, supportive and collaborative atmosphere. In addition to the quiet motivating presence of fellow writers, participants also met colleagues from across the humanities, boosting their connections and expanding their networks.

Limited Competitions

Each year, several federal agencies and private foundations announce funding opportunities and awards in the humanities and humanistic social sciences for which WashU is restricted to a limited number of applications. In many such instances, the Center for the Humanities is charged with organizing internal competitions to select the nominee(s). The process includes a call for proposals, review and scoring by an independent faculty-led committee and close proposal development with the successful applicants. This year, the center led the internal competitions for the Mellon Foundation Higher Learning Call for Concepts, Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship (see sidebar) and National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend.

AWARD HIGHLIGHT

Fenderson awarded Mellon Foundation’s New Directions Fellowship

The Mellon Foundation has selected Jonathan Fenderson, a scholar of Black social movements as well as Black intellectual and cultural history, for a prestigious New Directions Fellowship, which will expand his interdisciplinary research into music and sound studies.

New Directions Fellowships, awarded by the Mellon Foundation, support faculty members in the humanities and humanistic social sciences by funding systematic training outside their established areas of expertise. The foundation invites only a small number of universities to submit a nomination for this selective award, with the invited cohort varying each cycle. The Center

for the Humanities coordinated WashU’s internal nomination process for this opportunity and then helped Fenderson develop and submit his final proposal.

“I have always been deeply interested in hip-hop but never had the chance to formally study music,” Fenderson said. “Mellon’s New Direction Fellowship affords an incredible opportunity to expand my scholarly toolkit by taking courses and learning to look at the genre in more complex ways. The fellowship will not only lay the foundation for my next book project, but it will also enrich my teaching moving forward.”

Fenderson, an associate professor of African and African American studies, will undertake formal methodological and theoretical training in the fields of ethnomusicology and sound studies for his current research project, “Project Noise: NYC Public Housing, Neoliberalism and the Ascent of Hip-Hop America.” The two-year, $300,000 fellowship will support research leave and tuition for a course of study in the Departments of Music at the University of Chicago and WashU.

Set in the soundscape of New York City housing complexes, Fenderson’s next book will use hip-hop music emanating from public housing — in the first study of its kind — as a window to explore the human impacts of right-wing policies that promoted fiscal austerity, exacerbated illicit economies and authorized hyper-policing. The training in ethnomusicology and sound studies will allow Fenderson to draw new understandings of the effects of these policies by interrogating the range of artistic decisions made by public housing’s creative tenants.

Fenderson is the fourth WashU faculty member to receive a New Directions Fellowship. Past recipients are Nancy Reynolds (Department of History, 2014), Rebecca Messbarger (Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, 2005) and Mark Pegg (Department of History, 2005).

Internal Grants 2023–24

SUMMER FACULTY RESEARCH GRANT

Ila Sheren

Department of Art History and Archaeology

When the Borderlands Speak: Migration Narratives and Contested Humanity along the Frontera

Lauren Eldridge Stewart

Department of Music

Live from Powell Hall: Symphonic Cultures in Public

Lori Watson

Department of Philosophy

Catharine A. MacKinnon: An Intellectual Biography

SUMMER FACULTY RESEARCH GRANT + GRIMM TRAVEL AWARD

Uluğ Kuzuoğlu

Department of History

Cang Jie: Artificial Intelligence and Pseudoscience in the Sinosphere

GRIMM TRAVEL AWARD

Ji-Eun Lee

Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Writing Self, Writing the World: Women’s Essays and Miscellanies in Early Twentieth Century Korea

Michael Frachetti

Department of Anthropology

Unearthing Highland Political History of Medieval Uzbekistan

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH SEED GRANT

Anca Parvulescu

Department of English

East European Migration Networks

FACULTY SEMINARS

No applications this year.

WRITING GROUPS

RENEWALS

Medieval Studies Writing Group

Convener: Jessica Rosenfeld (English)

Religion and Literature Writing Group

Graduate student convener: Sara Flores (English)

READING GROUPS

NEW

Latin American Andean Fictions

Reading Group

Graduate student convener: Renzo Rivas Echarri (Romance Languages and Literatures)

Leyenkrayz: Yiddish Reading Group

Graduate student convener: Rebecca Weingart (Comparative Literature)

New Pedagogies/New Forms

Graduate student convener: Amy Peltz (English)

Trans Studies Reading Group

Graduate student convener: Gabriel Ridout (English)

Troubling Design: Readings in Visual and Material Culture

Convener: Aggie Toppins (Sam Fox School)

The Writing Biography Reading Group

Convener: Lori Watt (History and Global Studies)

RENEWALS

Approaches to Literary Pedagogy

Reading Group

Graduate student convener: Ashni Clayton (English)

Reading, writing and camaraderie

By Stephanie Nebenfuehr

The Center for the Humanities’ reading and writing groups provide a forum for pursuing specialty interests and connecting likeminded scholars.

Stephanie Nebenfuehr is a PhD student in the Program in Comparative Literature’s International Writers Track. In fall 2023, she completed a mentored professional experience (MPE) with the Center for the Humanities. Read the article by

Digital Humanities Reading Group

Graduate student convener: Michael Henderson (English)

Ethical Approaches to Reading Literature

Graduate student convener: Shea McCollough (English)

Ethnicity and Literature Reading Group

Graduate student convener: Ashni Clayton (English)

Finnegans Wake Reading Group

Graduate student convener: Max Carol (English)

Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Latin American Literature

Graduate student convener: Katherine Tilghman (Romance Languages and Literatures)

LGBTQ+ Literature in German

Graduate student convener: Christian Schuetz (Germanic Languages and Literatures)

Marxism and Literature Reading Group

Graduate student convener: Varun Chandrasekhar (Music)

Medical Humanities Reading Group

Convener: Christina Ramos (History)

Mind and Perception Reading Group

Graduate student convener: Alexander Wentzell (Philosophy)

Poetry and Poetics Reading Group

Graduate student convener: Trevin Corsiglia (Comparative Literature)

Sports & Society

Convener: Noah Cohan (American Culture Studies)

SUMMER RESEARCH SEED GRANT

Elizabeth Hunter

Performing Arts Department

Death is Obsolete: Staging Resurrection as Resistance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Ama Bemma Adwetewa-Badu

Department of English

Network Poetics: Black Transnationalism, Poetry, and the Making of Literary Worlds

WEINER HUMANITIES RESEARCH GRANT

Anne Margaret Baxley

Department of Philosophy

Happiness and Its Value in Kant's Ethics: Getting What One Wants and Why it Matters

Julie Singer

Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Building a Better Past: Speculative Medieval Architectures, from the City of Ladies to the Metaverse

Ji-Eun Lee

Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Leaving Home: Rethinking Domesticity through Women's Journeys in Korea

HUMANITIES SYMPOSIUM GRANT

Tili Boon Cuillé and Rebecca Messbarger

Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

The Catholic Enlightenment in Europe, the Americas and Australia (1700–1840)

SMALL GRANT FOR PUBLICATION

Flora Cassen

Department of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies

In Mala’s House: Growing up Jewish in Postwar Europe

Chris Eng

Department of English

Extravagant Camp: The Queer Abjection of Asian America

Samuel Shearer

Department of African and African American Studies

The Kigali After: A New City for the End of the World

Miguel Valerio

Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Mapping Diversity in Latin America from Colonial Times to the Present

Student Engagement

The graduate and undergraduate student engagement mission of the Center for the Humanities broadened and deepened significantly over the past year, with support from external grants, novel and expanded programming and a new staff member to oversee it all.

Meredith Kelling, PhD, joined the Center for the Humanities as assistant director for student research and engagement in August 2023. After consulting with students, instructors and administrators about supporting humanities students at WashU, she worked with center director Stephanie Kirk and fellow assistant director Laura Perry to launch multiple new efforts and to enhance existing ones. Below, we survey some of the year’s highlights.

GRADUATE EDUCATION

the summer of 2025. The center will also convene a humanities career fair next fall.

The humanities center supports humanities graduate students as they find audiences for their work, both within and beyond academia; plot careers both within and beyond the professoriate; and create writing and collaborative communities crucial to the development of research that speaks across disciplines and draws on an array of methods. As a nondepartmental unit supporting the humanities as a whole, the center seeks to connect graduate students with opportunities to do public-facing humanities work and to use their doctoral training in a variety of contexts.

Work experiences for humanities graduate students

In December 2023, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded $142,800 to the Center for the Humanities for “Humanities at Work: Graduate Internships for the Next Generation,” a new program that seeks to support students pursuing humanities PhDs for a wide range of career pathways.

The program addresses a shift in career outcomes — as documented by the Council on Graduate Schools, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Modern Language Association and American Historical Association — that has seen humanities PhDs put their degrees to work far outside the traditional tenure track. With the collaboration of local host community organizations, the humanities center will develop an internship program that builds skills in competencies integral to the humanities as well as the workplace, while training students how to use their humanistic writing, research and project management skills to play a meaningful role in community initiatives. The effort kicked off in August 2024, with the first

In a similar vein, the humanities center began hosting graduate students through Arts & Sciences’ Office of Graduate Studies Mentored Professional Experience (MPE) program during the past year. Working with staff mentors, students pursuing MPEs in the center develop projects that engage with humanities impact reporting, project management, symposium and event planning, humanities program research and development, grant writing and/or community engagement. In 2023–24, the center hosted the following students pursuing MPEs:

• Crystal Payne, PhD student in English and Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellow in American Culture Studies (fall 2023–spring 2024), who coordinated a high school internship program at Sumner High School and also contributed to community-engaged programming at the Sumner Studiolab, a joint project between the Center for the Humanities and the Sam Fox School’s Office of Socially Engaged Practice.

• Stephanie Nebenfuehr, PhD student in comparative literature,

Crystal Payne (WashU, center left) led the Sumner High School internship program in the Sumner Studiolab.

International Writers Track (fall 2023), who worked with the Center for the Humanities’ Reading and Writing Groups.

• Kimberly Annas, PhD student in Germanic Languages and Literatures (spring 2024), who studied and implemented impact reports and surveys to help the center document programming for graduate students.

RDE rolls on

Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the RDE initiative (Redefining Doctoral Education in the Humanities) provides funding and support for interventions in graduate education that innovate on traditional skills training to meet the needs of today’s graduate students. While the first years of the initiative facilitated grants and programming for individual faculty members, RDE’s evolving focus now targets both humanities departments and graduate students themselves.

RDE’s new Cluster Grants operate at the department level, with multiple faculty members collaborating around shared concerns in areas such as curriculum, dissertations, mentoring and diverse career outcomes. This year, Lynne Tatlock and colleagues in the Comparative Literature program and the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures were awarded support for departmental efforts to enhance mentoring, develop internships (local and international) and host a series of virtual conversations with professionals in nonacademic careers. Allan Hazlett and colleagues in the Philosophy and Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology (PNP) PhD programs were awarded a cluster grant to support their development of a new PhD minor in Philosophy of Emerging Technologies, including new courses and a pedagogy workshop series. Previously, Shanti Parikh and colleagues in the Department of African and African American Studies (AFAS) received support for the design of a new AFAS graduate certificate program through site visits to leading Black studies programs, faculty trainings and a 2024 symposium.

The 2024 RDE workshop, held March 28–29, invited graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences to focus on writing as a tool for advocacy of various forms. Through a series of workshops and discussions with an array of humanities practitioners, participants explored ways that graduate students can use their most well-honed and readily deployable skill — writing — to achieve a variety of ends across the graduate school experience, both on campus and off. (See page 15 for more on this workshop.)

extended into the planning process for the center’s events, with the aim of creating related programming specifically for graduate students. During this year’s Faculty Book Celebration on Feb. 29 (see page 20 for more on this event), keynote speaker Nicole Seymour led a two-hour writing workshop for graduate students, “From Climate Anxiety to Climate Action,” on writing in an age of major climate upheaval. Seymour guided participants in considering how and where they can take action, how to identify local resources and opportunities for meaningful impact, and how to use writing to build collectives around the issue of climate change. Seymour’s approach, which calls for reflection and deliberation, as well as pleasure, offered students from all fields a way of understanding how they might use their developing humanistic skills to build community and purpose around the issue of climate change.

The center also once again sponsored the participation of graduate students in the National Humanities Alliance’s (NHA) annual Humanities Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C., held this year March 10–12. Grad students Sewasew Assefa

“From Climate Anxiety to Climate Action, Part I,” led by Faculty Book Celebration keynote speaker Nicole Seymour (center), gathered a dozen graduate students to discuss strategies for sidestepping the traps of panic and despair often surrounding environmental crises and instead focus on community and action.

(Anthropology) and Skyler Dykes (Music and Law) learned about federal funding programs for humanities work and how to translate what humanists do to public officials and their staffs before joining Missouri’s NHA delegation to meet with the state’s members of Congress on Capitol Hill.

Writing together

New this year were two initiatives aimed at bringing together graduate students to pursue their diverse writing goals. Most Fridays, a group of humanities graduate students congregated in the center’s conference room for the Humanities Graduate Student Writing Commons, a morning of sustained writing and brainstorming of dissertation chapters, prospectuses, articles, reviews, term papers — or any assignment that required a lot of intellectual concentration. Attendees reported that the commons gave them a sense of camaraderie as well as the accountability of having a time and place blocked out exclusively for writing with others.

In the spring, the center partnered with the Writing Center to launch a series of Graduate Writing Workshops for graduate students in humanities and humanistic social sciences fields. Small, interdisciplinary workshop groups met regularly throughout the term to workshop long-term academic writing projects such as dissertation chapters, major fields papers, dissertation prospectuses and articles.

Meredith Kelling, assistant director for student research and engagement (second from left), led the inaugural cohort of the Banned Book Fellowship, in which undergraduates developed research projects and public presentations on book banning.

UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION

Humanities coursework and research prepares undergraduates to learn to navigate complex situations and ideas, make clearheaded decisions, serve as effective members of their communities, and communicate with a variety of audiences. To support these outcomes, the humanities center is committed to building community among undergraduates pursuing research in humanities fields, demystifying the nature of humanities research, and increasing the number of engagements between students and the diverse variety of on-campus events and programs in the humanities. (See also the Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellowship on page 37.)

Themed Fellowships

Themed fellowships, launched in spring 2024, support undergraduate students in all Arts & Sciences majors in pursuing short-term, individual humanities research on a shared topic, while also creating community among cohort members. The first iteration of the fellowship focused on threatened and challenged books. Over the course of the semester, the Banned Books Fellows met with representatives of PEN America and ACLU of Missouri to learn about the topic from the perspectives of writers and creators as well as the experts and advocates who defend their freedom of expression. Fellows developed research projects on related topics of their own choosing, such as:

• interviews with Florida booksellers and librarians about how they’ve adapted during the state’s surge of book bans and found ways to advocate for educational freedom;

• campaign donations in school board elections via various advocacy groups and the ensuing impacts on book ban policies; and

• impacts of limiting books on topics of queer sexuality and assessing how students in districts with limited sex education might use literature to learn about essential health topics.

In April 2024, fellows presented their research at a public event, “The Right to Read,” that they helped to plan.

Communicating humanities research

During the academic year, the center began collaborating with the Office of Undergraduate Research to develop new modalities for showcasing and disseminating research findings at the annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, beyond the traditional poster presentation format. This year, eight students gave lightning talks on their humanities research projects for the benefit of their fellow students, describing how they embarked on independent research and navigated its many challenges. The students discussed diverse projects, including a comparative study of midwifery in the U.S. and Europe, a historical analysis of Asian American mobilization on college campuses and an analysis of the impact of the Oslo Accords on Palestinian refugees in Jordan.

GIVING OPPORTUNITIES

The Center for the Humanities is dedicated to the promotion of humanistic thinking, inquiry and scholarly production as activities essential to this university, the community we serve and the broader world. The center facilitates the work of humanists, both faculty and students, by nurturing innovative research, transformative pedagogy and vibrant community engagement locally and globally.

THE IMPACT OF YOUR PHILANTHROPY

At the Center for the Humanities, we are grateful for every event attendee, volunteer and philanthropic supporter and for your belief in the center’s mission. Your contributions provide us with opportunities to expand and deepen the reach of the humanities and the important contributions our center achieves at Washington University as well as in our community and around the world. Gifts of any amount provide vital, ongoing support to humanities research and the dissemination of new findings, scholarly exchanges, student research experiences and engagement with the greater public.

• Because of you, the Center for the Humanities fosters a community of scholars that facilitates innovative, impactful research in the humanities at the faculty, graduate and undergraduate level, supporting scholars all along their career paths.

• Because of you, the Center for the Humanities provides a forum for humanistic ideas and promotes the humanities more broadly on campus and in the local community.

As we look toward the future, and with your help, the Center for the Humanities can extend its reach to global communities and expand its network of scholars to promote the humanities and the importance of humanistic ideas.

To explore the variety of opportunities you can support the Center for the Humanities through your philanthropy, please contact our University Advancement Liaison, Director of Strategy Katie Merritt (katie.merritt@wustl.edu or 314-935-9204).

MAKE A GIFT ONLINE

To make a secure online gift or to make payment on an existing pledge, visit our giving page at gifts.wustl.edu. To allocate your unrestricted gift for the Center, please type “Center for the Humanities” in the special designation box or scan the QR code at right to be redirected to our giving page.

MAKE A GIFT BY MAIL

Along with your check, please include a note to indicate the Center for the Humanities as your preferred designation to ensure it is allocated as intended. Please make checks payable to Washington University and send to:

If using FEDEX or UPS, mail to:

MSC 1082-414-2555

Washington University 7425 Forsyth Blvd. Clayton, MO 63105

If using USPS, mail to: MSC 1082-414-2555

Washington University 1 Brookings Drive St. Louis, MO 63130-9989

1. Graduate student Michael Henderson at “The Power of Buttons,” part of the National Humanities Center’s Being Human festival

2. James E. McLeod Memorial Lecture on Higher Education with Lorgia García Peña (Princeton University)

3. Crystal Payne, a graduate student undertaking a Mentored Professional Experience (MPE) with the humanities center, at the Sumner Studiolab

4. Writing as Advocacy career skills workshop series for humanities graduate students

5. Graduate students Sewasew Assefa and Skyler Dykes in Washington, D.C., for the National Humanities Alliance’s Advocacy Day

6. ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow Anya Yermakova (left) and music scholar-bassist Florent Ghys in an improvised performance for the public and RDE Artistic Research humanities graduate students at Tyson Research Center

7. Graduate and undergraduate students in the unique studiolab space for “The Politics of Reproduction”

Administrative staff

Stephanie Kirk

Director, Center for the Humanities

Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, with appointments in Comparative Literature, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Talia Dan-Cohen

Associate Director, Center for the Humanities

Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

Alicia Dean

Administrative Coordinator

Kathleen G. Fields

Publications and Communications Editor

Meredith Kelling

Assistant Director for Student Research and Engagement

Caitlin McCoy

Finance Cluster Supervisor

Laura Perry

Assistant Director for Research and Public Engagement

Contact details

Center for the Humanities

Washington University in St. Louis MSC 1071-153-20

One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899 314-935-5576

Umrath Hall, Room 217

cenhum@wustl.edu humanities.washu.edu

facebook.com/WashUHumanities x.com/WashUHumanities

Executive committee

Marlon Bailey

Professor of African and African American Studies and of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Heather Berg

Associate Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Patrick Burke

Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology

Jonathan Fenderson

Associate Professor of African and African American Studies

Uluğ Kuzuoğlu

Assistant Professor of History

Diana Montaño

Associate Professor of History

Casey O’Callaghan

Professor of Philosophy and PhilosophyNeuroscience-Psychology

Jessica Rosenfeld

Associate Professor of English

Ila Sheren

Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology

G’Ra Asim, a musician and an assistant professor in the Department of English, spoke about his research and creative practices at the symposium “Rethinking Tenure and Promotion Assessment in the Humanities: A Blueprint for Transformation and Innovation.”

Center for the Humanities

MSC 1071-153-207

Washington University in St. Louis 1 Brookings Drive

St. Louis, MO 63130-4899