Institutes, Organizations, and Centers

National and International

Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes
The CHCI is a collaborative association, comprised of 220 member organizations in 23 counties and 46 states. Housed in Duke’s John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, the Consortium acts as an advocacy body in the United States and now around the world to elevate the importance of the humanities in the eyes of benefactors and policymakers.

Humanities Commons
The Humanities Commons is an online networking site that provides humanities scholars with a space to discuss, share, and store cutting-edge research and innovative pedagogy. The Commons is a project of the Office of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association. It was designed in collaboration with scholarly societies in the humanities.

National Endowment for the Humanities
The NEH is one of the largest individual sources of funding for humanities scholarship in the United States, sponsoring the completion and publication of 7,000 books and 56,000 annual events across the United States. Grants are available for individual scholars as well as institutions whose aim is to advance the state of scholarship in the humanities.

National Humanities Alliance
The NHA is a collective of 140 partners, including museums, professional associations, and universities, dedicated to the proliferation of the study, funding and research of the humanities. They host multiple national conferences within the United States every year to advance their outreach in pursuit of this mission. 

National Humanities Center
The NHC’s focus is their Fellows, invited on a yearly basis, representing all branches of humanistic scholarship. The aim of this residential yearlong fellowship is the completion and publication of a book; the Center has sponsored 1,500 published works since 1978. The Center also cosponsors events with university partners around the United States.

Centers at Colleges and Universities

Colleges and universities around the country demonstrate their commitment to the humanities through their centers and institutes, hosting fellows and planning programs for the advancement of humanities scholarship.

Boston CollegeThe Institute for the Liberal Arts
The main activities of the ILA include the twice-annual call for proposals for grant funding, symposia and conferences hosted, such as the Lowell Humanities Series. Boston College believes, “The Institute for the Liberal Arts honors the Jesuit contribution to higher education by thinking seriously about the place of the liberal arts in the twenty-first-century university. 

Carnegie Mellon - Humanities Center
Carnegie Mellon’s Humanities Center has dedicated this academic year to the study of War and the Humanities, presenting talks on everything from drones to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. On annual basis, the Center also hosts an international film festival, with this year focusing on “Faces of Work,” exploring the challenges that everyday workers encounter.

Columbia - The Heyman Center
The Heyman Center aims to connect students and faculty with resources and events in the Humanities, hosting scholars sponsored by the Kenan and Mellon Foundations and putting on events such as “Patriarchy Takes a Back Seat in Kurdish Syria: Implications for Gender Theory, the Middle East, and the Midwest.” A unique part of their programming is the Justice-in-Education initiative, which aims to better incorporate issues of justice into the Columbia education and achieve outreach by providing education for incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated persons.

Cornell - Society for the Humanities
The Society offers fellowships for faculty members who, in turn for this support, offer seminars in the humanities; this year the seminars include such topics as “Lessons in the Anthropocene” and “Postcolonial Remix: Museal Urbanism and Artistic Networks.”

Dartmouth - The Leslie Center for the Humanities
The Leslie Center at Dartmouth promotes the humanities in hosting creators and researchers of the humanities (novelists and professors alike), thematic faculty and student study groups, research grants for Dartmouth affiliates and provides resources on academic matters like publishing and research access.

DukeJohn Hope Franklin Humanities Institute
The JHFHI hosts regularized programs and unique events throughout the year, and sponsors graduate summer travel to conduct research on global south history and humanities. Programs and events include activities such as Haitian film screenings and discussions on the intersection of nature and art.

Emory - The Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry
At Emory, their Center hosts a twice-annual Great Works Seminar, funded by an NEH Challenge Grant, to bring humanities to light on campus, and The Georgia Seminars, funded by Georgia Humanities, to understand the field’s impact on Georgian history. They also put on workshops for grant proposal writing and their own research grants.

Harvard - Mahindra Humanities Center
The Center at Harvard runs the typical programs of a Humanities Center, albeit on a scale larger than many others. Thirty monthly seminars meet to discuss topics as far ranging as opera and Buddhism. Hosting a lecture series by Toni Morrison and sponsoring nine fellows give a sense to the dedication Harvard shows towards its Humanities Center.

Johns Hopkins - Humanities Center
The Center's main project is coordinating symposia for faculty and student interdisciplinary engagement in the humanities. Such topics discussed have included “Philosophy and New American TV Series,” “The Edge of Privacy,” and “Why and How do Birds Sing? Why is it Interesting?”

New York University - Center for the Humanities
The Center at NYU sponsors events promoting the study of the humanities, including “What can you do with a BA in the Humanities?” and “What can you do with a PhD in the Humanities?” This semester, they have a series focusing on Environmental Humanities, and every semester they have six categories of available research grants.

Northwestern - Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities
Northwestern’s unique programming includes selecting 48 incoming freshmen to be Kaplan Scholars, challenging them in a yearlong sequence to integrate a variety of topics and methods, guided by an appointed faculty advisor in addition to four required courses. They also host an Artist-in-Residence program, bringing 1-4 artists per year to campus. This is in addition to the expected programming and funding opportunities for the Northwestern community.

Princeton - Council of the Humanities
The Council at Princeton coordinates an 8-scholar visiting professorship in journalism, events in the humanities such as “Christ, Chemistry, Curdled Cheese, and the Caravaggians,” and awards for undergraduate students in the humanities. The focus of the Council is journalism, though promotion of the humanities at large is central to their mission.

Stanford - Humanities Center
The SHC hosts 25 resident fellows annually, drawing not only from the Stanford faculty, in order to support the advancement of their humanities based scholarship. The Center also hosts interdisciplinary research meetings on a regular basis where interested parties may discuss topics such as African history contextualizing African development, how to approach data scarcity in Ancient times and how to understand capitalism in its many forms. Additionally, they have many one-day events that present specific works or series within the humanities.

University of Chicago - The Franke Institute for the Humanities
The Franke Institute serves as a point of collaboration among Chicago scholars and their peers, evidenced by their successful application for three current three-plus-year grants from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation for topics including the place of algorithms in education, the place for humanities in climate change research, and how music informs us of history. They also promote the humanities on campus via in house fellowships for faculty and graduate students, and conferences and series.

University of Pennsylvania - Humanities Forum
The Humanities Forum at Penn helps connect faculty and students to resources and funding in the Humanities from off campus sources as well as housing fellowships for their own. Their programming centers around an annual theme such as “Afterlifes,” “Translation,” and “The Book.” This year: “Sex.”

University of Virginia - Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures
The Institute at UVA hosts fellowships and research grants for faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, houses a semesterly course (this semester: The Moral Ecology of Food), and throws events, such as “Gospel Love Albums: Sex, Desire, and Real Spirituality.”

Vanderbilt - Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities
Jumpstarted in its founding by an NEH Challenge Grant, the Center hosts fellows, houses research funding and promotes the humanities in an interdisciplinary context on campus via research group meetings and events, exploring topics such as women’s roles in civil rights movements in the United States.