James E. McLeod Memorial Lecture on Higher Education

James E. McLeod Memorial Lecture on Higher Education honors the esteemed vice chancellor of students, who died in 2011. The lecture series addresses the role of the liberal arts in higher education, a subject especially meaningful to Dean McLeod. Recent past speakers include Eve Darian-Smith, Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Global and International Studies; and affiliated faculty in the Law School, Department of Anthropology and Department of Criminology, Law & Society at the University of California, Irvine (2025); Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy, Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (2024); Lorgia García Peña, Professor of Latinx Studies, Princeton University (2023); Mary Schmidt Campbell, 10th president of Spelman College (2022); and Gerald Early, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters and two-time director-chair of Washington University’s Department of African and African-American Studies (2021).

Faculty Book Celebration

The publication of a monograph or significant creative work is a milestone in the career of an academic. The Center for the Humanities commemorates this achievement annually during the Faculty Book Celebration. The event recognizes Washington University faculty from across the humanities and humanistic social sciences by displaying their recently published works and large-scale creative projects and inviting two campus authors and a guest lecturer to speak at a public gathering. Recent keynote speakers include Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley (2026); Nancy Fraser, the Henry and Louise A. Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research (2025); Nicole Seymour, professor of English, California State University, Fullerton (2024); Davarian Baldwin, the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies, Trinity College (2023); and Charles Johnson, professor emeritus, University of Washington (2022).

Global Humanities Lecture

The new series will bring a humanities scholar from a non-U.S. institution working on a topic of global interest. The event event is focused exclusively on global research, elevating the already stellar global work WashU’s humanities faculty and fostering dialogue, interdisciplinary thinking and understanding of the critical global challenges facing humanity today, as well as drawing important connections between global and local issues. The inaugural speaker for this lecture series is Sanja Bahun, Executive Dean of Arts and Humanities and Professor in the Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex (2026).

International Humanities Prize

The Washington University International Humanities Prize is awarded biennially to a person who has contributed significantly to the humanities through a body of work that has dramatically impacted how we understand the human condition. In April 2025, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage received the award. Past recipients include cartoonist-memoirist Alison Bechdel, internationally recognized choreographer and artistic director Bill T. Jones, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.