THI’s 2024-2025 Theme

What does it mean to be human? How do we as humans exist and share this planet with billions of other complex sentient beings? What do we owe each other? How does our notion of humanity change as we construct technologies that can perform tasks we once used to define our own uniqueness? In the age of the Anthropocene, where human activity has profoundly impacted life on Earth, how should we address growing anxiety about our collective future?

These types of questions about the human experience are not new, as ancient philosophers since the time of Aristotle and beyond have sought to understand humans alongside other animals and life on earth. Indigenous perspectives and environmental humanists challenge assumptions about humans’ singularity and separation from nature to highlight how our humanity is permeable, constantly shaped by and intertwined with other living and non-living entities. We have faced enormous global transformations, from colonization to world wars. And yet we are again in a moment where questions about our very humanity could not be more important. Emerging technologies such as genetic engineering have the potential to augment human capabilities and evolve humans into an enhanced species. Meanwhile, we are facing frightening questions about the ability of artificial intelligence to perform tasks we once thought were uniquely human. Governments and armed groups are dehumanizing people to justify mass atrocities. At the same time, a deepening climate crisis requires us to urgently act to avert catastrophic consequences for both our species and the planet, leading to renewed examination of what obligations we bear towards other species, ecosystems, and future generations of life on earth. These issues and many more spotlight why examining humanity itself is one of the most urgent and critical topics of our current moment. 

The Humanities provide crucial perspectives and deep insights into the complexities of human existence and fundamental questions about what it means to be human. In the Humanities, we consider what humans think and do in different time periods and cultures, how we create meaning and make sense of our identities, connections, and places. Humanities disciplines help us understand who we are and how we relate to other human beings and forms of life. The Humanities allow us to imagine different possibilities, while offering lessons from our complicated and often problematic pasts to inform our current moment and potential futures.

We are in a pivotal moment where we must ask and address profound questions about humanity that require the creative and critical thinking, historically informed, ethical, and problem solving skills of the Humanities. For two and a half decades, The Humanities Institute has been supporting and advocating for cutting-edge humanistic scholarship, helping students, scholars, and community members connect and work together to change the frame – we offer a multiplicity of humanities frameworks to re-examine and expand ways of seeing things, in order to spark new ideas and actions.  

For our 25th anniversary, The Humanities Institute is dedicating the 2024-2025 academic year to the theme of Humanity to help us understand and navigate the many facets of human life, as we respond to the transformative forces currently shaping our world, for the future of humans and our planet.