Director
Program Administrator
About
The Center for Humanities at Tufts fosters interdisciplinary humanities work in comparative literature, comparative religion, world history, philosophy, anthropology, the arts, and critical theory. The Center hosts public lectures, seminars, conferences and colloquia by visiting artists, writers, and scholars, and brings together faculty, postdoctoral, and graduate student dissertation fellows. Fellows participate in a research seminar and attend monthly public events with distinguished visiting scholars. The Center is organized around interdisciplinary work in comparative global humanities. Comparative global humanities names an interdisciplinary study that considers the links, exchanges, and entanglements of culture, art, music, theatre, literature, religion, philosophy, and politics, not only in the modern period, but throughout the longer course of world history that includes slavery, colonialism, migration and war. While recent global exchanges and interdependency initiate new discussions of personhood, culture, society, and the world, our interdisciplinary research begins from the premise that global connections are not new, and that humanities and social science knowledge practices can be rethought in terms of global relationality.
Each year, the Center selects a theme around which to organize some of its central activities. In the 2020-2021 year, the Center was organized around the theme of "Emergencies, Ruptures." The Center funded pilot grants that addressed this theme and current issues around race and Covid-19. The Center is also coordinating a Translating Race Lab with Tufts' Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora.
The Center sponsors faculty fellowships, postdoctoral fellowships, and graduate student dissertation fellowships.