Director
Associate Director
Institute Coordinator
About
The Alice Coonley Higgins Institute for Arts and Humanities, formerly known as the Higgins School of Humanities, enhances the intellectual and cultural life of Clark University by fostering connections between the arts and humanities disciplines—English; History; Language, Literature, and Culture; Philosophy; and Visual and Performing Arts. We sponsor public programming and campus initiatives, support curricular innovation and teaching excellence, and fund creative practice and research through our internal grant programs.
Founded in 1986, the Higgins Institute’s ongoing mission emphasizes the essential role of the arts and humanities in our lives and champions a liberal arts education that empowers students to become informed, engaged citizens who can contribute meaningfully to society. In cultivating the ability to read great texts and artistic forms, to frame analyses and arguments on the most important questions, to speak and listen with open intensity, and to examine our own deepest assumptions, the humanities bring value and purpose to lived experience. Learning through the humanities and arts grounds our capacity to engage with societal complexities by developing historical, cultural, literary, linguistic, and philosophical consciousness.