Here’s a look at the Graduate Student Fellows joining the humanities center for the 2022-23 academic year. The competitively selected students actively participate in the center’s intensive, interdisciplinary intellectual environment.
Research, revise, repeat: Training the academy’s next scholars
What does it take to join the professoriate – and would you want to? Those questions ground Arts and Sciences’ two undergraduate honors fellowships in the humanities, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and the Merle Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellowship. Faculty directors Jonathan Fenderson and Jean Allman discuss the push-and-pull of teaching the research process, the students’ “fingerprints” on one another’s work and the moments of self-discovery they make along the way.
Real estate and the hidden history of the U.S. AIDS epidemic
Residential segregation based on racial and economic inequality is a pre-existing condition that exacerbates any transmissible health threat – from tuberculosis to COVID-19 to AIDS. René Esparza, assistant professor in the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, takes up the latter in a case study of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in his new book-in-progress, “From Vice to Nice: Race, Sex, and the Gentrification of AIDS.”
Bechdel to receive Washington University International Humanities Prize
The Center for the Humanities announces the recipient of its 2022 International Humanities Prize, cartoonist-memoirist Alison Bechdel. A lecture and award ceremony will take place Nov. 9 on the Washington University campus.
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.
A presentation of historical medical texts from the Becker Medical Library will precede the discussion.
View Event
25May
Virtual Book Club: The Pull of the Stars
A presentation of historical medical texts from the Becker Medical Library will precede the discussion.
Virtual - RSVP | 3:00 PM
In 1918 Dublin, in an understaffed maternity ward, the lives of nurse Julia Power, doctor Kathleen Lynn, and volunteer Bridie Sweeney come together. Set against the backdrop of twin catastrophes of the Great Flu Pandemic and World War I, the novel follows these three women over the course of three days in a story of how hope can persevere against all odds.
A presentation of historical medical texts from the Becker Medical Library will precede the discussion.
Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Rd, St. Louis, MO, 63117
Screening of the short film ‘More Than One Thing’ followed by a brief discussion
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31May
Counter/Narratives: ‘More Than One Thing’
Screening of the short film ‘More Than One Thing’ followed by a brief discussion
Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Rd, St. Louis, MO, 63117 | 6:30 PM
The story of the Pruitt-Igoe housing development is often considered a tragedy. Throughout its existence, local media regularly fixated on its downfall due to lack of resources, proliferating racist images of crime, neglect and disorder. In reality, its history is much more complex. The short film More Than One Thing provides a different viewpoint of this moment in history through the personal narrative of teenager and resident Billy Towns. The film was shot by WashU graduate student Steven Carver in 1968 and 1969 and is told through the eyes of Billy as he narrates over footage of his everyday life, sharing his hopes and dreams with the viewer. The film acknowledges some realistic concerns, but largely serves as an embracing and optimistic portrayal of the young man, providing space for him to speak in his own words.
Presentd by the Ethical Society of St. Louis and Washington University Libraries. The film was first screened at the Ethical Society in 1970 and was preserved and digitized by Washington University Libraries’ Film and Media Archive in 2016. The film is included in the exhibition Counter/Narratives: (Re)presenting Race & Ethnicity, on view at the John M. Olin Library through July 10, 2022.
Time devoted exclusively to research and writing is integral to academic productivity. Faculty fellowships provide the opportunity to make significant strides.
Apply for funding for humanities research, fellowships, reading groups and more
The humanities center facilitates the labor of humanists by nurturing innovative research, transformative pedagogy, and vibrant community engagement locally and globally.