Humanities/Humanity

Humanities/Humanitybrings together small groups to advance thought about foundational topics connecting disciplines. Launched in 2014, the program encourages scholars from multiple disciplines to learn from one another in workshops that tend to break from the traditional format of academic conferences. Each year, the program enables scholars, near and far, to gather in person: these gatherings can be seminars, workshops, discussion groups, or conferences. Recent Humanities/Humanity workshops have brought visual and performance artists, poets, filmmakers, and activists—along with scholars from fields as varied as history and nuclear physics—to Yale University, where they’ve explored topics ranging from the poetics and politics of desert space to protest and performance in Russia and East Europe today. 


2022–23 Humanities/Humanities

Lyric Thinking Across Disciplines decorative

How does lyric poetry move through the world? What place does it have in our cultural, social, political worlds? And why do lyrics—whether understood as literary masterpieces or the words to our favorite songs—continue to touch us in both “body and soul”? Bridging lyric theory and poetic praxis, this workshop series invites scholars, poets, and songwriters to collectively rethink the incredible persistence of lyric forms across various cultures, time periods, and media. 

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The Political Pedagogy Today workshop brings together scholars from a range of disciplines, along with intellectually active political educators to consider the claim that political activity itself constitutes a form of education. The focus for thinkers—from disciplines as various as Literature; Political Philosophy; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; and Education—is to find out what the 2010s have to teach us about pedagogy, on the one hand, and about parties and movements, on the other.