Discovery & Inspiration

Though it lasted for only a brief period, the Ghurid dynasty provides a fascinating lens through which to consider the religious and political forces that shaped Central Asia during the medieval period. NHC Fellow Alka Patel has spent years in the region examining architectural structures and archival materials to help better understand the Ghurids, situated as they were between the Persianate and...

Poets have long used ekphrasis—the vivid description of a piece of visual art—as a way of exploring the deep complexity of representation, the relationship between the artist and her art, and to make legible things which may otherwise seem inexpressible. NHC Fellow Meta DuEwa Jones is herself a poet and a scholar of poetry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is an associa...

In the opening lines of his most famous poem, “To Althea, From Prison,” Richard Lovelace writes, “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage...” This line expresses a thought common among imprisoned writers across time — that regardless of the conditions of their imprisonment, the human spirit and the poetic imagination cannot be constrained. NHC Fellow Andrea Brady, however, suggests...

Five hundred years ago—in February 1519—Hernán Cortés set out from Cuba with an expeditionary force heading for a confrontation with the Mexica, rulers of the Aztec Empire. Two years later, with the sacking of the capital, Tenochtitlan, the Spanish conquest was complete. Over the course of the following century filled with radical upheaval, demographic collapse, plague, mass migration, economic tr...

Monuments commemorating historical figures, events, and regimes can be found nearly everywhere, yet we often barely notice them. At other times, though, the histories they represent can inflame passions and the monuments themselves become contentious flashpoints for their communities. NHC Fellow Mia Fuller, associate professor of Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is a cult...

For most of us, learning to read is an important milestone in our intellectual development. This accomplishment is a cornerstone on which our educations and professional lives are built, and one of the primary mechanisms through which we connect with the world. But for some people, specifically those affected by neurological disorders such as dyslexia or dementia, reading can be an experience frau...

Since at least the early years of the twentieth century, scholars have taken an interest in the artistic and intellectual productions of so-called “outsiders,” or individuals whose unconventional perspectives and aesthetic expression have often been assumed to result from serious mental illness. These artistic creations and written works are generally defined by idiosyncratic characteristics; they...

Though its viability as a political party was short-lived, the influence of the Federalists extended well beyond the early years of the American republic. After the election of 1800, the party’s fortunes dimmed, and the party dissolved in 1824, but its ideas have continued to shape American institutions and political attitudes up to the present day. NHC Fellow Gretchen Murphy has researched the wa...

Aristotle’s thinking on a variety of topics has influenced western philosophy for over two millennia. His writings on ethics, in particular—emphasizing human character and ethical psychology—continue to shape contemporary ideas about personal virtue and moral agency. NHC Fellow Audrey Anton, however, has emphasized the importance of understanding the role that vice plays in Aristotle’s philosophy....

With increasing urgency, climate scientists and environmentalists have sought to mobilize public action to address the crisis of global warming. Warning us about the dire need to radically change how we use energy, the ways we grow and distribute food, and many other activities, they’ve described a future in which our planet is increasingly unlivable. But, beyond imagining a world devastated by un...

As it has taken shape as a distinct field of scholarly inquiry, animal studies has significantly contributed to our understanding of other species and our relationships with them. Drawing on a variety of disciplinary approaches across the humanities and sciences, animal studies has challenged traditional categories that have long gone unquestioned, such as “nature” and “wildness” that not only cla...

The influence that medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas has had on Western thought is difficult to fully grasp. Contemporary thinking in fields from political ethics to psychology has been shaped by his writings. But Aquinas’ model of the mind—of how we perceive and contemplate the world—has been ignored or misunderstood by contemporary scholars. National Humanities Center Fellow Thé...

Next year will mark the centennial of the founding of Bauhaus, the German center for aesthetic thought founded by Walter Gropius. Known for its functionalist structures and unadorned style, the movement formally ended in 1933, the final year of the Weimar Republic. Still, its influence continues to this day, informing design choices in a wide variety of fields—from architecture to typography, fash...

In the 17th century, the notion of the infinite universe was so controversial that believers could be burned at the stake. Today, however, the concept of infinity is commonplace, integrated not only into science and math curricula, but how we understand our world. NHC Fellow John H. Smith, Professor of German at the University of California, Irvine, is currently at work on a project that explores...

Historically, issues surrounding psychiatric care in the United States have produced crises of various kinds—perhaps nowhere more so than in the Deep South. Milledgeville, Georgia—featured in the literary works of authors such as Alice Walker, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers—is no exception. The antebellum state capitol, Milledgeville was also home to the state mental hospital, an institut...

Legalized slavery has been abolished around the world, yet human trafficking remains a significant problem. Though slavery may not take the exact forms it did in the nineteenth century, approximately 45.8 million persons in 167 countries endure modern forms of slavery. National Humanities Center Fellow Laura Murphy, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Modern Slavery Research Project...

First emerging in the Italian Renaissance, the sonnet was used to document and address a problem, such as the pain of unrequited love. Under the shadow of slavery and then Jim Crow, African American poets from Phillis Wheatley to Natasha Trethewey have adopted the sonnet’s 14-line form to poetically register political protest. National Humanities Center Fellow Hollis Robbins, from Johns Hopkins Un...

The average American produces four and a half pounds of trash every single day, and, as a whole, the U.S. generates nearly a quarter of a billion tons of garbage each year. Yet one person’s trash is another’s treasure. For instance, entire television channels are devoted to hoarders, and artists around the world craft “garbage art” from found materials. So what can we learn about ourselves from wh...

In the decades following the American Civil War, African American intellectuals focused much of their attention beyond the borders of the United States and, in doing so, engaged global histories of colonization, slavery, immigration, and imperialism. They also found occasion to celebrate the traditions, achievements, and contributions made by Africans around the world. While a significant body of...

Over the past century, revolutions in technology and increased mobility have fostered connections across vast spaces and among different cultures. Still, Americans’ sense of regional identity remains strong. NHC Fellow Wendy Griswold, Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and professor of sociology at Northwestern University, has studied how literary culture helps produce and maintain regional...

A democratic society relies on the ability of citizens to address one another in a measured and temperate fashion, yet civil debate in recent years has become increasingly contentious and polarized. In this podcast, NHC Fellow John McGowan, professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discusses how literature—specifically comedy—can help us re...

For years, public discourse and policy debates about people with disabilities have focused on the rights of those with medically recognized impairments. Increasingly, however, scholars in the field of disability studies, including Fellow Nancy J. Hirschmann, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, are reshaping the way we see our bodies, the range of freedoms we enjoy, an...

Since the early modern era, history has been largely viewed through an anthropocentric lens, skewing towards the involvement of humans. David Christian (National Humanities Center Fellow 2006–07) flips this narrative by zooming out to see history—specifically, Big History—on a larger scale, measured by geological and cosmological time. Big History is a model that embeds human history within the hi...

Scholars in gender and sexuality studies have largely ignored or dismissed attempts to explain the causes of sexual deviation for a variety of reasons. In this podcast, National Humanities Center Fellow Benjamin Kahan discusses how his work, exploring “the historical etiology of sexuality,” moves past those scholars’ dismissal of early sexuality theories in hopes of producing a fuller understandin...

Non-human, post-human, anti-human. In recent years, historians, political theorists, philosophers and others have increasingly tried to think beyond an anthropocentric perspective to gain insights on a wide range of questions. But these ways of thinking have a long precedent in American fiction. In this podcast, NHC Fellow Kate Marshall, associate professor of English at the University of Notre Da...