From Imperial Rome to the modern day, the writings of Plutarch, an ancient philosopher, scholar and biographer, have offered lessons on leadership. A new project by Zoe Stamatopoulou, associate professor of classics and a Faculty Fellow in the Center for the Humanities for the spring 2021 semester, singles out one of his lesser known works for closer analysis. Read on for more of Stamatopoulou’s “Plutarch’s Symposium of the Seven Sages: A Commentary and a Translation.”
Historian of the Middle Ages Christine Johnson finds parallels between today’s post-pandemic labor shortages and the temporary shift in power to workers after the Black Death reduced Europe’s medieval population by a third. Then and now, she writes, the ruling classes seek to reinstate and reinforce previous social and labor hierarchies.
Newly honored with an Oscar for screenwriting, the film ‘Promising Young Woman’ considers the fate of those who defy others’ expectations for recovering from trauma, writes Rebecca Wanzo. What happens when someone can’t (or won’t) “just get over it”?
“Can you save more energy by buying 1 Prius and driving it 15 miles or by buying 3 Priuses and driving them 5 miles each?” In Michael R. Allen’s review of “Stop Saving the Planet” by historian and Sam Fox Research Fellow Jenny Price, he finds compelling evidence that this kind of picayune debate in today’s popular environmental movement allows bad actors to escape responsibility and action.
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 Center for the Humanities is celebrating National Poetry Month with a new installment of Life/Lines, the daily poetry practice. Novice and published poets alike are invited to create short poems in response to an email prompt sent weekdays through the month, beginning April 1. All poems — in any language — will be published on our website. For more information, or to sign up for the daily prompt, click the button below.
For Washington University humanities and humanistic social sciences faculty, post-docs and graduate students
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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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