In a season steeped in dark magic, flesh-ripping beasts, and mysterious hauntings, what is the scariest thing about “Lovecraft Country”? Genre literature scholar Michael Sanders on the “unnamed horror” of the HBO series.
Gironima Spana has gone down in history as one of Europe’s most famous 17th century serial killers. Accused of leading a ring of lethal wives in poisoning their unsuspecting husbands, Spana and her accused conspirators met their end at the hangman’s noose. But are the legends accurate — was justice served? Scholar of early modern Italy Craig Monson investigates in his new book, The Black Widows of the Eternal City: The True Story of Rome’s Most Infamous Poisoners.
The public transfer of power from one president to the next has played a major role in reconciling political factions and creating solidarity among the populace at large after a contested presidential election. With the Election Day 2020 around the corner — and Inauguration Day a couple months after that — historian Peter Kastor and A&S grad Joey Vettiankal consider the historical precedents and wonder what will come next.
That suave spy who prefers his martinis shaken, not stirred sits atop an empire of licensing deals and competing storylines, playing out in a vast James Bond universe. Film scholar Colin Burnett on the storytelling and business strategy that modernized media franchising.
Jessica Rosenfeld (English) surveys the multiple meanings of the emotion of envy across time and their political ramifications to today. Despite its reputation as a destructive and malicious force, she writes, “envy can be productive when it is not directed at one person in particular but is instead directed at the way society is structured.”
The human fingerprint maps our identity, the ties that bind us, the lingering traces we leave on this earth. As humanists, we explore the durability as well as the fragility of the human condition — opening windows onto worlds near to home and oceans away, worlds we interpret through stories and images, poems and performance, history and narratives, sounds and silence. At Washington University in St. Louis, the Center for the Humanities facilitates the labor of humanists by nurturing innovative research, transformative pedagogy, and vibrant community engagement locally and globally.
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Pursuing new scholarly ideas about the world takes funding — whether it's for a two-month tour of research sites in Japan or a two-week trip to an archive to view materials available only there — that can be hard to find via regular channels. The Center for the Humanities fills this gap with a number of funding opportunities for Washington University faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Learn more about their stories!
The chairs and directors of Humanities departments and programs at Washington University in St. Louis have prepared this statement. In times of severe challenges, we feel that it is crucial that we avail ourselves of the invaluable resources that humanities scholarship and education offer.
Geraldine Heng, is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin, with a joint appointment in Middle Eastern studies and Women’s studies.
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The humanities center facilitates the labor of humanists by nurturing innovative research, transformative pedagogy, and vibrant community engagement locally and globally.
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