The Center for the Humanities

The Center for the Humanities Free events, exhibitions, seminars, conferences, projects, and more in the humanities and arts in th

Founded in 1993, the Center for the Humanities encourages collaborative and creative work in the humanities at CUNY and across the city through seminars, publications, and public events. Free and open to the public, our programs aim to inspire sustained, engaged conversation and to forge an open and diverse intellectual community. We bring together CUNY students and faculty from various discipline

s to engage with each other as well as with prominent journalists, artists, civic leaders, and scholars from other universities. In the tradition of CUNY and the Graduate Center’s commitment to ensuring access to the highest levels of educational opportunity for all New Yorkers, all events are free and open to the public.

The CUNY Climate Assembly Project (CCAP) is a new democratic initiative for CUNY students to advance climate solutions a...
07/08/2025

The CUNY Climate Assembly Project (CCAP) is a new democratic initiative for CUNY students to advance climate solutions at CUNY. We are currently seeking applications from The Graduate Center, CUNY doctoral students for two positions: Democratic Engagement & Communications Fellow and a Curriculum & Public Programming Fellow. CCAP is a generously funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Deadline to Apply: Monday, August 4th, 2025

Interview Timeline: Aug 11 to Aug 22nd

Eligibility: CUNY Graduate Center Doctoral Students Only

Compensation: $10,000

Hours: This role is part-time, and hours may vary considerably week to week. We approximate weekly participation will range between 3 hours on light weeks and 10 hours during heavy weeks.

Duration: August 2025 to June 2026

The CUNY Climate Assembly Project (CCAP) is a groundbreaking initiative to advance climate solutions, civics education, and models of collaborative governance. Supported by an Andrew W. Mellon seed grant, the initiative is led by the Center for the Humanities and the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC) at the CUNY Graduate Center.

At the heart of this initiative is a climate assembly (also known as civic or citizens’ assemblies). Drawing on a long and diverse lineage of democratic decision-making practices, CCAP will select CUNY students through a civic lottery to ensure the assembly represents their communities’ unique demographic and political diversity. Unlike a political poll or town hall, the assembly will spend a significant time learning with a range of experts, collaborating through facilitated deliberations, and developing recommendations to advance cross-sectoral collaboration and policy solutions on a specific climate issue at CUNY.

Members of the CUNY community not serving on the assembly can engage in public forums, educational curricula, and an impact network of organizations to learn and weigh in on the issue at hand. After the assembly, a portion of the students from the assembly will be supported to advance the resulting recommendations. With more than 700 examples worldwide, CCAP is the first of its kind at a US public urban university. CCAP is part of a global, deliberative wave building on a proven method for civic problem-solving that is revitalizing a new vision and practice of democracy.

To apply and learn more about these two fellowship opportunities, and more about the CUNY Climate Assembly Project (CCAP), visit our website here:
https://centerforthehumanities.org/call-for-applications-cuny-climate-assembly-project-ccap-fellowship-opportunities/

The CUNY Climate Assembly Project (CCAP) is a new democratic initiative for CUNY students to advance climate solutions a...
07/08/2025

The CUNY Climate Assembly Project (CCAP) is a new democratic initiative for CUNY students to advance climate solutions at CUNY.

We are currently seeking applications from CUNY Graduate Center doctoral students for two positions: Democratic Engagement & Communications Fellow and a Curriculum & Public Programming Fellow.

CCAP is a generously funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Deadline to Apply: Monday, August 4th, 2025

Interview Timeline: Aug 11 to Aug 22nd

Eligibility: CUNY Graduate Center Doctoral Students Only

Compensation: $10,000

Hours: This role is part-time, and hours may vary considerably week to week. We approximate the weekly participation will range between 3 hours on light weeks and 10 hours during heavy weeks.

Duration: August 2025 to June 2026

Visitation our website www.centerforthehumanities.org to Apply and learn more about these fellowship opportunities, responsibilities, and the CUNY Climate Assembly Project (CCAP), a groundbreaking initiative to advance climate solutions, civics education, and models of collaborative governance, led by the Center for the Humanities and the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC) at the CUNY Graduate Center .

Meet our 2025 Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document InitiativeArchival Research Fellows! This year, thanks to generous...
06/30/2025

Meet our 2025 Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document InitiativeArchival Research Fellows! This year, thanks to generous support from the Early Research Initiative at the The Graduate Center, CUNY, 20 doctoral students have received financial and logistical support as they travel to archives here and abroad, both personal and institutional, developing their innovative poetic research. Read about the 2025 Lost & Found Fellows and their archival research projects: https://centerforthehumanities.org/2025-lost-found-archival-research-fellows-and-projects/

Natasha Tiniacos “Tongues of Fire: The Unpublished Poems of Gloria Anzaldúa”

Serena Solin “In Search of Will Alexander’s Thermodynamic Poethics”

Poe M. Allphin “Lou Sullivan’s Q***r Transmasculine Advocacy”

Onur Ayaz “The Making of MAX: Selected Correspondence of Jonathan Williams and Charles Olson, 1951-1957”

Ju Ly Ban “Missing Watch and Broken Pen, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee in Transit”

Lucien Baskin “The Educational Writings of Stuart Hall & Black Feminist Educators in London During the Late 20th Century”

Joseph Cáceres “Lois Elaine Griffith’s Poetry, Visual Art, and Archival Practice”

Coco Sofia Fitterman “Small Press, Little Magazine, Mail Art: Collaborative Publishing Networks in the University at Buffalo Poetry Archives”

Sochuiwon Priscilla Khapai “The Collaborative Works of Robert Duncan and Jess Collins”

Rebecca Teich “Mapping Samuel Delany’s Poetic Dialogues”

Cortnie Belser “Evocative Resistance against the “Decadent God of White Supremacy”: 3 Black Women as Community Othermothers of Education and Human Rights Activism”

Kehinde Alonge “Liner Note Revolution”

Jonathan Toro “Nuyorican Aesthetic: Archiving Maria “Mariposa” Fernandez’ Life and Work

Liz Janoff “The Letters of Mary Ellen Solt”

Jeff Voss “The Unknown Works of Richard Pryor”

Michael Villanova “David Wojnarowicz’s Unpublished Poetry”

Sam O’Hana “Charles Olson: Psychological Warfare Executive”

Claire Dauge-Roth “Interlacing Text and Textile in the Archives of Anni Albers”

Souli Boutis “Stephanie Strickland’s Revolutionary Developments in Late New American Poetry”

Shobita Mampilly “Etheridge Knight’s Free People’s Poetry Reunion”

https://centerforthehumanities.org/2025-lost-found-archival-research-fellows-and-projects/

As always, a big thanks to ongoing support from our collaborators EngagingtheSensesFoundation to make our work possible.

06/30/2025

Meet our 2025 Lost & Found Archival Research Fellows! This year, thanks to generous support from the Early Research Initiative at the The Graduate Center, CUNY, 20 doctoral students have received financial and logistical support as they travel to archives here and abroad, both personal and institutional, developing their innovative poetic research. Read about the 2025 Lost & Found Fellows and their archival research projects: https://centerforthehumanities.org/2025-lost-found-archival-research-fellows-and-projects/

Natasha Tiniacos “Tongues of Fire: The Unpublished Poems of Gloria Anzaldúa”

Serena Solin “In Search of Will Alexander’s Thermodynamic Poethics”

Poe M. Allphin “Lou Sullivan’s Q***r Transmasculine Advocacy”

Onur A. Ayaz “The Making of MAX: Selected Correspondence of Jonathan Williams and Charles Olson, 1951-1957”

Ju Ly Ban “Missing Watch and Broken Pen, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee in Transit”

Lucien Baskin “The Educational Writings of Stuart Hall & Black Feminist Educators in London During the Late 20th Century”

Joseph Cáceres “Lois Elaine Griffith’s Poetry, Visual Art, and Archival Practice”

Coco Sofia Fitterman “Small Press, Little Magazine, Mail Art: Collaborative Publishing Networks in the University at Buffalo Poetry Archives”

Sochuiwon Priscilla Khapai “The Collaborative Works of Robert Duncan and Jess Collins”

Rebecca Teich “Mapping Samuel Delany’s Poetic Dialogues”

Cortnie Belser “Evocative Resistance against the “Decadent God of White Supremacy”: 3 Black Women as Community Othermothers of Education and Human Rights Activism”

Kehinde Alonge “Liner Note Revolution”

Jonathan Toro “Nuyorican Aesthetic: Archiving Maria “Mariposa” Fernandez’ Life and Work

Liz Janoff “The Letters of Mary Ellen Solt”

Jeff Voss “The Unknown Works of Richard Pryor”

Michael Villanova “David Wojnarowicz’s Unpublished Poetry”

Sam O’Hana “Charles Olson: Psychological Warfare Executive”

Claire Dauge-Roth “Interlacing Text and Textile in the Archives of Anni Albers”

Souli Boutis “Stephanie Strickland’s Revolutionary Developments in Late New American Poetry”

Shobita Mampilly “Etheridge Knight’s Free People’s Poetry Reunion”

https://centerforthehumanities.org/2025-lost-found-archival-research-fellows-and-projects/

Check out some of the work on Kafka in New York originally shared at this symposium, now up on !A video by Esther Neff...
05/22/2025

Check out some of the work on Kafka in New York originally shared at this symposium, now up on !

A video by Esther Neff gives maps, diagrams, and visual representations of mental pathways, all set up within the POV of a New York City rat winding its way through and around “Kafka’s Cognition.”

An essay by Jason M. Leggett on “Kafka’s Migrants in New York City’s Rules of Crisis[1]” …and you’ll have to read it to know what the footnote is!

Links in bio and Distributaries highlight!

Welcoming personal changeJoin us Thursday, May 22nd at 12 PM EST for this guided meditation session “Welcoming personal ...
05/19/2025

Welcoming personal change
Join us Thursday, May 22nd at 12 PM EST for this guided meditation session “Welcoming personal change” facilitated by Anaïs G. Duplan. This session will focus on personal change and insight on change in Buddhist practice. To what extent are we willing to be changed by present circumstances? How do we know when to welcome personal change? What about when to refuse change?

This series is open to the public and encouraged for community organizers who work around climate justice or social justice issues. From facilitating meetings to navigating physical reactions to stress and escalation, this workshop is intended for anyone who wants to approach their work with care, thought, and reflectiveness.

Register in bio or upcoming event highlight!

Read "Between Delivery: Letter Threads After the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Archive (Part I)" This series of letters emerged ...
05/16/2025

Read "Between Delivery: Letter Threads After the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Archive (Part I)" This series of letters emerged from Ju Ly Ban’s work as a Fellow for Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative from the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY, grounded in archival engagement with the work and life of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Attuned to the fragments of her presence in the archive, the letters imagine otherwise by rethinking how she has been approached, interpreted, and held in relation.

When Ju Ly Ban first arrived at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Theresa’s letters spoke to her most. Her correspondences (letters to editors, friends, and fellow artists) seemed to breathe, their voices rippling across time. As she read, Ju Ly felt drawn into their presence, as if sitting beside Theresa and those she wrote to. Each page felt alive in her hands, grounding her in moments that felt at once past and present.

The letters that follow continue this conversation. They are part of an exchange among Ju Ly Ban, Isabelle Utzinger-Son, and Cici Wu. For the past two years, the three friends have written to one another about Theresa, her life, her art, and the traces of both they have found within and beyond the archive. Composed in New York, London, Hong Kong, and in the in-between spaces of planes and trains, these letters carry their thoughts of each other and of Theresa, whose work first brought them together. They offer these words in the hope that they might reach you, and that their voices, like hers, might linger in your present as hers continues to shape theirs:
https://centerforthehumanities.org/between-delivery-letter-threads-after-the-theresa-hak-kyung-cha-archive-part-i/

05/16/2025

This series of letters emerged from Ju Ly Ban’s work as a Fellow for Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, grounded in archival engagement with the work and life of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Attuned to the fragments of her presence in the archive, the letters between Ju Ly Ban, Isabelle...

Between Delivery: Letter Threads After the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Archive (Part I)This series of letters emerged from Ju ...
05/13/2025

Between Delivery: Letter Threads After the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Archive (Part I)

This series of letters emerged from Ju Ly Ban’s work as a Fellow for Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative from the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, grounded in archival engagement with the work and life of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Attuned to the fragments of her presence in the archive, the letters imagine otherwise by rethinking how she has been approached, interpreted, and held in relation.

When Ju Ly Ban first arrived at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Theresa’s letters spoke to her most. Her correspondences (letters to editors, friends, and fellow artists) seemed to breathe, their voices rippling across time. As she read, Ju Ly felt drawn into their presence, as if sitting beside Theresa and those she wrote to. Each page felt alive in her hands, grounding her in moments that felt at once past and present.

The letters that follow continue this conversation. They are part of an exchange among Ju Ly Ban, Isabelle Utzinger-Son, and Cici Wu. For the past two years, the three friends have written to one another about Theresa, her life, her art, and the traces of both they have found within and beyond the archive. Composed in New York, London, Hong Kong, and in the in-between spaces of planes and trains, these letters carry their thoughts of each other and of Theresa, whose work first brought them together. They offer these words in the hope that they might reach you, and that their voices, like hers, might linger in your present as hers continues to shape theirs.

DISTRIBUTARIES IS BACK! The CFH blog returns with a new series highlighting what our Fellows find in the archive, and th...
05/13/2025

DISTRIBUTARIES IS BACK!

The CFH blog returns with a new series highlighting what our Fellows find in the archive, and the feelings, artistry, and scholarship that arises from that work. First up is Ju Ly Ban on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.

Amongst other things, Distributaries will highlight student projects and work, archival research projects and journeys, l Research Fellows, and CUNY student fellows work and projects for the !

For more info and for Ju Ly’s post, see link in bio or the new Distributaries Highlight!

If you missed “What’s Left for the Animals?” it is now available to watch on our website! On animal liberation and multi...
05/12/2025

If you missed “What’s Left for the Animals?” it is now available to watch on our website! On animal liberation and multispecies politics in the framework of anticapitalist resistance.

Link in bio and past events highlight!

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