Welcome to the WashU Center for the Humanities! Keep scrolling for the latest info on what’s going on in the center right now. And for more resources, follow these links for details on center fellowships, center grants, graduate student programming, undergraduate student offerings, events and news and feature stories on our blog. Or, sign up for our mailing list to stay on top of all our news!

Behind the scenes

Angela Davis (right) kicked off the Sawyer Seminar: Black Studies and the Future of the American University on Thursday, September 10. She responded to questions from moderator Shanti Parikh (left), professor of cultural anthropology and immediate past chair of the Department of African and African American Studies, and audience members. A capacity crowd listened to Davis’ comments on academic freedom, artistic contributions to revolution, language study as a means to broaden one’s world and imagination, veganism’s role in movements for justice, and keeping hope alive in dark times.

Announcements

Join a reading or writing group!

Join our scholarly reading and writing groups to transform your isolated study routine into a collaborative campus community. Each group listed below is welcoming new WashU faculty and graduate student members (a couple are open to the public, too!). Click on the button below learn more about the groups and where to start.

African Literature Reading Group • Complicating Childhood: Interdisciplinary Readings and Pedagogy in Children’s Studies • Digital Humanities Reading Group • Disability and Embodied Difference Reading Group • Environmental Humanities Reading Group • Finnegans Wake Reading Group • Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Latin American Literature • George Eliot Reading Group • Jewish Studies Working Group • Language Pedagogy Reading Group •  Marxism and Literature Reading Group • Medical Anthropology Reading Group • Medieval Studies Writing Group • Poetry and Poetics Reading Group • Psychoanalysis Reading Group • Religion and Literature Writing Group • St. Louis Reads Dante • Sports and Society: Culture, Power, and Identity • Yiddish Reading Group

EXPLORE GROUPS

Sawyer Seminar: Black Studies and the Future of the American University

Convened by the WashU Department of African and African American Studies and the Center for the Humanities, this Sawyer Seminar explores how Black studies can sustain academic freedom and help reimagine democratic higher education. Through a yearlong series of conversations featuring leading scholars and public intellectuals, the seminar brings together faculty, students and community partners to examine how Black studies offers vital perspectives on power, inequality and democracy while shaping the future of higher education. Free, public monthly lectures (September 2026-May 2027) kick off with Angela Davis on Sept. 10. Davarian Baldwin follows on Sept. 17.

Livestreams added for the following talks:

• Thursday, September 17: Davarian Baldwin

dates & details

Humanities graduate student fall workshop series

Offered in partnership with the Office of Graduate Studies and the Center for Career Engagement, the Center for the Humanities' fall workshop series equips humanities graduate students with practical skills for academic and professional success, covering topics such as writing academic cover letters, building effective mentoring relationships, securing funding and long-range career planning. Join us at noon on Sept. 24, Oct. 20, Nov. 19 and Dec. 3 — lunch provided!

DATES & DETAILS