Humanities Center

Director: Khurram Hussain, Ph.D. (Yale University)

Email:   incasgrd@lehigh.edu |  Phone: 610-758-4280

Website:  http://humanitiesctr.cas.lehigh.edu/

Supported by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies, 610-758-4280
Maginnes Hall, Suite 490, 9 West Packer Avenue

Committee:

Thomas Chen, Modern Languages and Literatures; Suzanne M. Edwards, English; Mary Foltz, English; Eugene Han, Art, Architecture, and Design; Khurram Hussain, Religion; Melpomene Katakalos, Theatre;  Chad Kautzer, Philosophy; Olivia Landry, Modern Languages and Literatures; Lee Tong Soon, Music; Monica Miller, Religion; Lindsey Reuben Muñoz , Modern Languages and Literatures; Ugur Pece, History; Annabella Pitkin, Religion; Lorenzo Servitje, English; Amardeep Singh, English; María Bárbara Zepeda Cortés, History

The humanities consider how we understand and record human experiences. Encompassing a wide range of disciplines including philosophy, history, literature, religion, visual arts, music, and language, humanistic study teaches us how to think creatively and critically about our own identities and our connections to others—whether they live across the street or across the world, whether they lived long ago or will live in the futures we imagine. The Humanities Center at Lehigh University is thus vital for building community both on and beyond our campus. The Humanities Center creates interdisciplinary intellectual opportunities for students, faculty, and staff engaged in humanistic inquiry across departments and programs. Through talks, reading groups, conferences, research grants, and informal gatherings, the Humanities Center fosters a broad community rooted in vibrant, rigorous, and creative inquiry into what it means and has meant to be human.

Research Activities

Supporting scholarly research is at the core of the Humanities Center mission. In the past, faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates have applied for funding to support reading groups, colloquia, conferences and visiting speakers. Graduate students have also received modest financial support to enable them to travel to present research at academic conferences. Summer, Individual and Collaborative Research Grants have also been available for faculty and graduate students. The objective of these grants has been twofold:

1. to strengthen the intellectual community of Lehigh’s scholars in the Humanities and

2. to provide support for faculty to pursue a humanistic research project or creative activity and for graduate students to finish their dissertations.

In the future we plan to add research seminars and workshops designed by eligible faculty to support their own research and conferences that lead to publication to the Humanities Center’s research portfolio. We believe that these kinds of events will give our faculty and graduate students opportunities to buttress their publications and to interact with well-known scholars who could both help their work and raise their profiles in the field. Improving our research footprint and our profile across academia should enhance our ability to secure grants from sources in and outside the university, and both national and international institutions. The Humanities Center intends to be at the cutting edge of this mission.