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.”
There’s something new happening in Belarus. On August 9, the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, was pronounced winner of his sixth term as president, claiming more than 80% of the vote, with his opponent, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya — his first real challenger in decades — receiving less than 10%. Supporters of free and fair elections immediately poured into the streets in protest — and haven’t gone home. In the weeks since, writes Anika Walke (History), protesters have begun to look beyond the current moment and to a society built on principles of mutual recognition and equality.
Launched this month with a colleague at Illinois Wesleyan University, Abram Van Engen’s (English) “Poetry for All” podcast aims to demystify poetry and invites even skeptics to join in. Each 15-minute episode takes on a single poem, first reading it, then taking it apart, and then reading it again. “Poetry is not reserved for those with a special interest and talent in the literary arts,” he writes. “Poetry is for us all.”
Major global events like the COVID-19 pandemic make failures in our health education system startlingly apparent. Last summer, Kiegan Baranski, Class of 2020 and a graduate of the minor in medical humanities, wrote about the 1939-40 World’s Fair exhibit “The Hall of Man” and its successor, the Cleveland Health Museum. By inviting questions and hands-on interaction, these museum models encouraged the public to become “captains of their own learning.”
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.
Rebecca Wanzo is chair and professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
View EventCarl Phillips is a professor in the Department of English.
View EventSari Altschuler, Associate Professor of English, Associate Director, Northeastern Humanities Center, Northeastern University
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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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