In partnership with our humanities colleagues in the Commonwealth Campuses, an initiative demonstrating the value of humanities education is ongoing. Humanities Works tells the stories of people who use the skills and knowledge of the humanities to face real-world challenges and to make better solutions. Read more at https://www.humanitiesworks.psu.edu/.

C. Libby, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Tuesday, April 1, Noon-1:00pm. 124 Sparks Building

Lunch will be provided.

This talk places the theological practice of unknowing (apophasis) in conversation with contemporary writing on the abyss. Turning to medieval French mystic Marguerite Porete’s visionary writing, I theorize an understanding of embodiment that exceeds the biopolitical logics of gender.

Shirley Moody-Turner, Associate Professor of English and African American Studies

Tuesday, April 8, Noon-1:00pm. 124 Sparks Building

Lunch will be provided.

In this talk, Shirley Moody-Turner discusses her biography-in-progress on Anna Julia Cooper, trailblazing Black educator, intellectual, and activist, who fought to maintain and expand Black access to higher education.  She explores what was at stake in the battle over Black higher education at the turn into the twentieth century and shows how the national ascendency of Jim Crow segregation played out in the local politics affecting the lives of Black Washingtonians. Her talk charts how this struggle propelled Cooper’s own journey to become one of the first Black women to earn a PhD, while also documenting the collective strategies she and her contemporaries enacted to respond to the assault on Black higher education.

Episode 9 of HumIn Focus, “Teaching Humanity: The Social Value of Higher Education” premiered on WPSU on October 24th, 2024, at 9:00 p.m.  Click here to read more about this episode.

HumIn Focus is a multi-part web series centering on pressing social issues through the lens of the work of humanities scholars. To learn more about the web series, visit the HumIn Focus website.

Monday, March 31 at 4:00 pm
110 Robb Hall, Hintz Family Alumni Center
Reception to follow.

The Humanities Institute will host our annual “Celebrate the Humanities” Lecture and Outstanding Alumni Award event on March 31 at 4:00 in the Hintz Family Alumni Center on the University Park campus.

Our invited lecturer, Dr. Sara Guyer, Irving and Jean Stone Dean of the Division of Arts & Humanities and Professor in the Department of English at UC Berkeley, is well-known for her initiatives in furthering positive narratives regarding the value of the work of the humanities. 

We will also present our Outstanding Alumni Award to Dr. Rónké Òké, 2015 PhD Philosophy.

In this current moment, it is especially important to demonstrate our support of the humanities at Penn State and to be a part of a crucial conversation regarding how to respond to the ongoing challenges we face in the humanities and in higher education more generally. 

We hope to see you there!

In partnership with our humanities colleagues in the Commonwealth Campuses, an initiative demonstrating the value of humanities education is ongoing. Humanities Works tells the stories of people who use the skills and knowledge of the humanities to face real-world challenges and to make better solutions. Read more at https://www.humanitiesworks.psu.edu/.