Member Newsletter: Annual Themes

The following is excerpted from the CHCI Membership Newsletter from Nov 9, 2023. To receive the latest in best practices, models, and advice from your fellow CHCI members, make sure you are signed up for our CHCI newsletter here.

Many humanities centers and institutes employ annual themes for their events and programs. Below we spotlight just a few of the annual themes for 2023-24 amongst the CHCI membership. Also, CHCI Board Member Teresa Mangum provides some advice for centers with limited budgets on how shorter term themes can sometimes extend and amplify your existing programs and partnerships.

• The two-year theme from the Center for the Arts & Humanities at Colby College is Play (pictured above).
• The Humanities Center at Texas Tech University announced Value/Values as Its Annual Theme for 2023-2024.
• The Humanities Institutes at UC Santa Cruz's 2023-2024 theme is Technology.
• The Humanities Center at the University of Pittsburgh would like to introduce the 2023-2024 theme of Histories.
• The Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto announced its 2023-24 theme as Absence.
• The Global Arts + Humanities at Ohio State University's Society of Fellows announced its theme as Freedom Dreams

ADVICE ON THEMES

"It might be interesting for new directors to know that it can be constructive and creative to do shorter term, less structured themes. For example, I received a grant to hold a design institute on collaborative research in environmental studies, so I’ve decided to use that as an anchor for a series of events on that topic during spring semester. Similarly, when we award funding for our annual symposium, we often hold a ‘town meeting’ and invite representatives of organizations from the campus and community to plan related events over the semester or year. I tell them I don’t have funding for them, but I do have the ability to help promote events and to do so as a series. Often, local museums and our independent bookstore work with us. Sometimes, the music department will plan coordinated concerts, etc. More examples:

1. A symposium on ‘What Can Museums Become’ had related courses and events.
2. A series of events related to the 'Against Amnesia: Archives, Evidence, and Social Justice’ conference that included an archives crawl, related classes, etc. with partners on and off campus.
3. A symposium on ‘German Iowa and the Global Midwest’ led to a multi-year series of events that included traveling exhibits, digital archives, related conferences, tours of the beer tunnels under Iowa city built by German brewers, workshops for high school teachers, etc.

For those, like Obermann, who are working with a very limited budget, necessity can be the mother of themed invention. This has been a great way to build partnerships around the area while also stretching dollars. Thinking about themes this way might be more encouraging for smaller centers."