humanities

This summer, Ena Selimovic, a doctoral candidate in comparative literature in Arts & Sciences, will join 30 predoctoral students from around the country in Chicago for a three-week workshop that explores careers outside of the academy or tenure-track system.

Provost Holden Thorp, PhD, discusses the important role of the humanities in American higher education in delivering the Phi Beta Kappa/Sigma Xi Lecture for the Assembly Series earlier this month. Held annually, the lecture is part of the Phi Beta Kappa initiation ceremony. This year, 81 students were inducted into the prestigious honor society.

Joseph Loewenstein, PhD, director of the Humanities Digital Workshop, is leading a vertical seminar for faculty, staff and graduate students in the digital humanities. The burgeoning field gives scholars new methods to analyze literature and history and encourages a new kind of cross-disciplinary collaboration.

In an American Academy of Arts & Sciences report called “The Heart of the Matter,” the academy argues that the humanities and social sciences are necessary for a vibrant, competitive and secure nation. This is not the usual argument for the humanities, and that’s a good thing, according to WUSTL Provost Holden Thorp, PhD. He will give the annual Phi Beta Kappa/Sigma Xi lecture on April 17, titled “From Salesman to Hamletmachine: The Need for the Humanities.”

Some of the country’s leading scholars of jazz and American culture will teach at Washington University’s National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for High School Teachers July 4-29. “‘Teaching Jazz as American Culture’ will offer participants an exciting opportunity to learn about one of the most extraordinary art forms the United States has ever produced,” says Gerald L. Early, Ph.D., Washington University’s Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters and director of the Summer Institute. “The instructors in the institute are among the most noted jazz scholars, writers and composers in the country,” says Early, “and the high school teachers’ exposure to this collection of expertise should be both enriching and inspiring.”