Global Humanities Institutes: What Are They? What Will Yours Be?

What does collaboration among humanities centers on a long-term and truly international scale look like and what can be accomplished through such initiatives?

CHCI has been working to create models of global collaboration in order to promote the possibilities that this type of work can engender. With the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CHCI has become able to fund multi-year, multi-institutional, multi-locational, and multi-generational institutes focused on member-initiated themes, methods, and practices. Two institutes already took place in 2019, two more are planned, and CHCI is currently looking for more proposals to fund.

These collaborative opportunities have come to be called GHIs: Global Humanities Institutes. Each Institute involves five (or so) CHCI member-centers forming partnerships with one another (including with humanities institutes that are not yet members) to propose a theme, method, or practice in the humanities as an “expression of interest.” The partnerships are funded for 18 to 24 months so that there can be a year-long planning stage, a two-week institute serving as the project’s centerpiece in the second year, and a “post-institute” period, for refining achievements into an intellectual legacy befitting the partners’ ambitions.

These expressions of interest are very brief (no more than two pages), and the partnerships can still be in the process of formation (perhaps applicants haven’t even contacted their ideal partners by this stage). CHCI can even help to find partner institutions for promising proposals.

Please be aware that for the next round of GHIs, which will be held in 2021, these initial expressions of interest are due on 15 October 2019. CHCI highly encourages all expressions of interest. Further details, and the application, can be found here.

After the initial expression of interest, a subcommittee of the CHCI International Advisory Board select a few promising projects and invite their authors to submit a full proposals that unpack intellectual content, confirm international partnerships, specify institute goals and activities, choose meeting locations, and define desired results. Again, CHCI is happy to provide feedback and discussion in order to turn expressions of interest into viable proposals.

To date, two GHIs are in their second year of funding (having just held their two-week institutes in July 2019) and another two GHIs are just getting started. At CHCI’s last annual meeting, held in Dublin this past June, representatives from each of these four GHIs presented the outlines of their projects and, for about an hour, fielded questions from other CHCI members about the application process and the details of how to implement such large projects. That conversation is available on our website and will be a great resource to those who are considering an expression of interest.

The content of these GHIs are innovative, engaging, and intensely relevant; so, they deserve to be expanded upon a bit here as well.

For example, in Santiago this summer, scholars from Chile, South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom hosted an international group of scholars to develop strategies of research and practices of translation in the context of the cultural, ethical, and political challenges accompanying the movement of people caused by warfare, economic necessity, colonialism, and violence. Their own method of communication included an innovative experimentation with whisper translation while they mined the interconnections of hospitality, memory, utopianism, historicity, and violence in relation to the theoretical issues and practical densities of translation.

At the exact same time in Dubrovnik, another group of scholars gathered on Croatia’s sunny shores in order to engage the dark-rolling effects of cultural traumas on contemporary crises of democracy experienced throughout the world. Faculty from universities in Zagreb, Dublin, Delhi, Saõ Paulo, and New York hosted academic participants from six continents as they shared experiences, research, and strategies of resistance. Dance, film, and archival rigor, among an array of other methods, were all brought to bear on these desperate issues not only in the lecture hall but also at sites of suffering and struggle including Mostar, Srebrenica, and Sarajevo.

A new GHI currently in development comes to CHCI from the University of Kansas leading a partnership with the University of Dar es Salaam, the Universidade Federal da Bahia, and the Université de Cheikh Anta Diop in order to develop a new agenda for health humanities research on children and young people in African and African-descended communities. The planning faculty of this project represents the disciplines of African and African-American Studies, Anthropology, English, History, Linguistics, Psychology, and Brazilian Studies. One of their common goals is to address the ways in which anti-black racism and symbolic violence combine with structural inequalities to predispose children and youth to embodied experiences of trauma, addiction, and other chronic afflictions. Dar es Salaam will host the two-week institute associated with this initiative.

The fourth current GHI on “Migration, Logistics and Unequal Citizens in Contemporary Global Context” is formed by five universities: National Chiao Tung University (Taiwan), Western Sydney University (Australia), Mahidol University (Thailand), University of Malaya (Malaysia), and Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland). This GHI, to be hosted in 2020 in Kuala Lumpur, will form a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration for people studying or working on issues related to migration, logistics, and unequal citizens in the global context. Activities in the institute will include seminars, participant presentations, workshops, group discussions, film and performance viewings, and site visits. The Institute will create occasions for sharing knowledge and experiences among participants, migrants, activists, NGOs/CBOs, and other stakeholders. If you are interested in participating in this latter GHI (about migrant workers) as an early-career scholar, you should know that its organizers are also currently taking applications.

If your organization is not a member of CHCI, you can still apply, but your institution will need to become a member in order for you to be accepted and to attend. More information about centers or institutes becoming a member of CHCI can be found here.