Matisse and Slow Looking
Art historian John Klein marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Henri Matisse on December 31 with a meditation on the “slow looking” the artist’s work — and so much more — rewards.
A War With Words: How Spain’s Women Lobbied Against Slavery in Cuba
Faculty Fellow Akiko Tsuchiya details the the social and cultural role that Spanish women writers and intellectuals played in the male-dominated antislavery movement of the 19th century, both within and beyond Spain’s national borders, and the space they created for women’s political participation in the public sphere.
On Borders and Unnatural ‘Natural’ Deaths
Nature itself — in the form of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and California and the Mediterranean Sea — has been enlisted by many nations to carry out enforcement of their borders, writes Tabea Linhard, professor of Spanish, comparative literature, and international and area studies. This strategy allows governments to obscure the role policy plays in deaths of migrants in these hostile terrains. Holocaust Memorial Lecturer Jason De León (UCLA) will detail the stakes at the U.S. southern border on Wed., Dec. 4 in his talk “The Land of Open Graves: Understanding the Current Politics of Migrant Life and Death along the U.S.-Mexico Border.”
The City Electric: How Mexico City’s People Shaped Its Electrified Future
We inhabit electrified spaces. Utility posts and aerial and underground cables surround us. Our horizon is broken down by high voltage towers, transformers, posts and power lines. In her current book-in-progress, “Electrifying Mexico,” Faculty Fellow and historian of modern Latin America Diana Montaño delves into the making of electrified spaces in Mexico City. Her work looks at how ordinary citizens (businessmen, salespersons, inventors, doctors, housewives, maids, and domestic advisors) saw themselves and their city as modern through electricity. Here, she previews how people and power shaped Mexico City’s fate.
About the Center
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.
Read More About Our Mission and Our History
upcoming
events
The Land of Open Graves: Understanding the Current Politics of Migrant Life and Death along the US-Mexico Border
Women's Building Formal Lounge
Jason De León, Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles - Holocaust Memorial Lecture
View EventSymposium on Empire in the Eighteenth Century
DANFORTH UNIVERSITY CENTER, ROOM 234
Featuring talks by Sophus Reinert, Christy Pichichero and Thomas Dodman.
View EventBlackface Broken Records: On the Eve of the Blues Feminist Experiment
Hillman Hall, Clark-Fox Forum
Daphne A. Brooks, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, and Professor of Theater Studies, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Yale University - Faculty Book Celebration 2020
View Event
Ovid’s ‘Ibis’: Out of Exile
The Feuding Physician of Ancient Rome
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.
Learn More