The National Humanities Center (NHC) is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United States. The NHC operates as a privately incorporated nonprofit and is not part of any university or federal agency.
The center was planned under the auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which saw a need for substantial support for academic research in the humanities, and began operations in 1978. [1] The National Humanities Center is one of the ten members of the Some Institutes for Advanced Study consortium–which are modeled after the Princeton, New Jersey, Institute for Advanced Study [2]
The National Humanities Center offers dedicated programs in support of humanities scholarship and teaching as well as a regular schedule of public events, conferences and interactive initiatives to engage the public in special topics and emerging issues.
Each year, the NHC admits approximately forty fellows chosen from among hundreds of applicants from institutions in the United States and abroad representing a broad range of disciplines. In addition, a few senior scholars are invited by the center's trustees to assume fellowships. The National Humanities Center has no permanent fellows or faculty.
NHC fellows are given substantial support to pursue their individual research and writing projects. Interdisciplinary seminars provide fellows the opportunity to share insights and criticism. For the 2022–2023 academic year, NHC fellows' research topics include [speculative fiction] by and about Black women, the [Armenian genocide], the history of the [infodemic] phenomenon, and social revolt in early twentieth-century Latin America, as well as other subjects in the fields of African American studies; East Asian studies; education studies; environmental studies; gender and sexuality studies; history; history of art and architecture; Indigenous studies; languages and literature; Latinx studies; Middle East studies; music history and musicology; philosophy; religious studies; and Slavic studies. [3] NHC fellows have library access at nearby Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as the NHC's own reference facility. [4]
Since 1978, the NHC has hosted over 1,500 scholars who have published over 1,700 books.[ citation needed ]
The National Humanities Center is distinctive among centers for advanced study in its commitment to linking scholarship to improved teaching. Programs developed at the NHC provide teachers with new materials and instructional strategies designed to make them more effective in the classroom on a wide range of topics.
Through its AmericaInClass.org site, the NHC allows participants to learn directly from leading scholars and access an extensive archive of primary source materials – arranged in online collections and accompanied with discussion questions and instructional planning guides for classroom use. The NHC makes these materials available without charge.
TeacherServe, [5] the NHC's online interactive curriculum enrichment service, supplements its training and primary source collections with essays by leading scholars, instructional activities, and links to online resources to enrich teachers' understanding of topics and suggest approaches for more effective classroom teaching.
Recent initiatives from the Center include projects to improve teachers' subject knowledge on Vietnam, to help teachers use digital mapping technologies in classroom instruction, and to explore the experience of military veterans through literature.
The National Humanities Center hosts a variety of public events, both to stimulate public awareness of humanities scholarship and to address special topics. Events have included appearances by A. S. Byatt, Seymour Hersh, Michael Ignatieff, Oliver Sacks, Michael Pollan, Elaine Scarry, Wole Soyinka, Raymond Tallis, Wang Hui, and E. O. Wilson and addressed a wide variety of topics including the relationship between rock and roll and literature, humanities and the public good, and the role of the humanities in addressing climate change and environmental degradation.
The center has also launched initiatives designed to demonstrate the value of the humanities in the lives of individuals from all walks of life and to promote a deeper understanding of, and more productive discourse around, public issues. The center's interactive Humanities Moments project was created in partnership with the Federation of State Humanities Councils in an effort to gather, store, and share personal accounts of how the humanities illuminate and transform the lives of individuals and thereby help "reimagine the way we think and talk about the humanities." Featuring news about the humanities and highlighting perspectives from leading humanists on compelling issues, the center also launched Humanities in Action in 2018 to help scholars, teachers, students, and other citizens "connect, learn more, and get involved" encouraging visitors to become better informed about issues affecting humanities research and education as well as to better appreciate how the humanities can contribute to public debate on questions of broad concern.
Since 1978 the National Humanities Center has been led by six directors: Charles Frankel, William Bennett, Charles Blitzer, W. Robert Connor, Geoffrey G. Harpham, and current director Robert D. Newman. [6]
The NHC is governed by a distinguished board of trustees from academic, business, and public life and has included a number of the leading figures in American scholarship over the past thirty years. [7] Among these are its founders Meyer Abrams, Morton W. Bloomfield, Frederick Burkhardt, Robert F. Goheen, Steven Marcus, Henry Nash Smith, Gregory Vlastos, John Voss, and founding director Charles Frankel, historian John Hope Franklin, educator William C. Friday, and philanthropists Archie K. Davis and Stephen H. Weiss. [8]
The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars spanning all disciplines across the humanities and social sciences and a funding body for research projects across the United Kingdom. The academy is a self-governing and independent registered charity, based at 10–11 Carlton House Terrace in London.
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. Via the program, competitively-selected American citizens including students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists, and artists may receive scholarships or grants to study, conduct research, teach, or exercise their talents abroad; and citizens of other countries may qualify to do the same in the United States.
William Julius Wilson is an American sociologist, a professor at Harvard University, and an author of works on urban sociology, race, and class issues. Laureate of the National Medal of Science, he served as the 80th President of the American Sociological Association, was a member of numerous national boards and commissions. He identified the importance of neighborhood effects and demonstrated how limited employment opportunities and weakened institutional resources exacerbated poverty within American inner-city neighborhoods.
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York is a public research institution and postgraduate university in New York City. Formed in 1961 as Division of Graduate Studies at City University of New York, it was renamed to Graduate School and University Center in 1969. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, CUNY Graduate Center is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity".
The Royal Society of Canada, also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada, is the senior national, bilingual council of distinguished Canadian scholars, humanists, scientists, and artists. The primary objective of the RSC is to promote learning and research in the arts, the humanities, and the sciences. The RSC is Canada's national academy. It promotes Canadian research and scholarly accomplishment in both official languages, recognizes academic and artistic excellence, and advises governments, non-governmental organizations, and Canadians on matters of public interest.
Gerald James Holton is a German-born American physicist, historian of science, and educator, whose professional interests also include philosophy of science and the fostering of careers of young men and women. He is Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and professor of the history of science, emeritus, at Harvard University. His contributions range from physical science and its history to their professional and public understanding, from studies on gender problems and ethics in science careers to those on the role of immigrants. These have been acknowledged by an unusually wide spectrum of appointments and honors, from physics to initiatives in education and other national, societal issues, to contributions for which he was selected, as the first scientist, to give the tenth annual Jefferson Lecture that the National Endowment for the Humanities describes as, “the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished achievement in the humanities”.
Jehuda Reinharz served as President of Brandeis University from 1994–2010. He was the Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History and Director of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry at Brandeis. He is the president and CEO of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation. On September 25, 2009, Reinharz announced his retirement as President of Brandeis, but at the request of the Board of Trustees, he stayed on until a replacement could be hired. On January 1, 2011, Reinharz became president and CEO of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Foundation.
Sir David Nicholas Cannadine is a British author and historian who specialises in modern history, Britain and the history of business and philanthropy. He is currently the Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, a visiting professor of history at Oxford University, and the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He was president of the British Academy between 2017 and 2021, the UK's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. He also serves as the chairman of the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in London and vice-chair of the editorial board of Past & Present.
Anthony Thomas Grafton is an American historian of early modern Europe and the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, where he is also the Director the Program in European Cultural Studies. He is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize. From January 2011 to January 2012, he served as the President of the American Historical Association. From 2006 to 2020, Grafton was co-executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) is the largest college of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The college was established in 1913 through the merger of the College of Literature and Arts and the College of Science. The college offers seventy undergraduate majors, as well as master's and Ph.D. programs. As of 2020, there are nearly 12,000 undergraduate students and 2,500 graduate students attending the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Charles Frankel was an American philosopher, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State, professor and founding director of the National Humanities Center.
Caroline Walker Bynum, FBA is a Medieval scholar from the United States. She is a University Professor emerita at Columbia University and Professor emerita of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She was the first woman to be appointed University Professor at Columbia. She is former Dean of Columbia's School of General Studies, served as president of the American Historical Association in 1996, and President of the Medieval Academy of America in 1997–1998.
Pauline Alice Maier was a revisionist historian of the American Revolution, whose work also addressed the late colonial period and the history of the United States after the end of the Revolutionary War. She was the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The Georgia Historical Society (GHS) is a statewide historical society in Georgia, United States. Headquartered in Savannah, Georgia, GHS is one of the oldest historical organizations in the United States. Since 1839, the society has collected, examined, and taught Georgia history through a variety of educational outreach programs, publications, and research services.
Philip S. Khoury is Ford International Professor of History and Vice Provost at MIT. He is also a trustee of the American University of Beirut and previously served as Chairman from July 2009 till June 2024.
Annette Gordon-Reed is an American historian and law professor. She is currently the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University and a professor of history in the university's Faculty of Arts & Sciences. She is formerly the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard University and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Gordon-Reed is noted for changing scholarship on Thomas Jefferson regarding his relationship with Sally Hemings and her children.
(Jun) Hao Huang (黄俊豪) is a Hakka Chinese American concert pianist, published scholar, narrator, playwright, composer and the Bessie and Cecil Frankel Endowed Chair in Music at Scripps College.
Gilbert T. Sewall is an educator and author who writes on politics, education, and culture. He has been most recently a contributor to the Spectator World and American Conservative. His essays and book reviews cover arts and ideas, and the nature of civil society. A resident of New York City from 1978 to 2019, he lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Jamsheed K. Choksy is a Distinguished Professor, former Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, former Chair of the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, and current Director of the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center at Indiana University - Bloomington. Choksy completed his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1985 and doctoral work at Harvard University in 1991 where he was elected a Junior Fellow (1987-1991). From there, he embarked on a career in academia, beginning as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University (1991-1993) and subsequently a tenure track professor at Indiana University in 1993, eventually holding appointments in a variety of different programs in that university. He has been a NEH Fellow and Member at the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1993-1994), a Guggenheim Fellow (1996), a Mellon Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto (2001-2002), and a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar (2018-2019).