We're Only Human
Exploring the promise of humanistic study
To mark the final year of the Humanistic Inquiry Program - which was supported by a five-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation - and to continue its work of supporting interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching at Emory, the university hosted a day-long Interdisciplinary Humanities Conference in March. The Humanistic Inquiry Program helped Emory recruit the Mellon Faculty Fellows (MFF), promising young scholars who are pursuing innovative humanistic research and teaching beyond the traditional purview of humanities.
The promise of humanistic study is challenging students to think about the values we hold as human beings—ethical. cultural. moral values and looking at how these values—sustain the status quo. challenge the status quo. and transform the status quo.
To think critically often means that you will not share the opinions of your classmates or your colleagues, and that can be an existentially lonely place. We have to create spaces that allow students to stand when it seems as if nobody is there with them.
The Emory community wants to be —and will be—more than the sum of its parts. We agree on the 'what' but not necessarily on the 'how'.
You question boundaries and borders and divisions, not by pretending they don't exist, but by figuring out how you can think across them.
How much risk are we willing to take on as individuals and as an institution to move beyond our silos as we wish to?
