The Cogut Institute for the Humanities is an interdisciplinary hub for innovative humanities research and teaching at Brown University, supporting both individual scholars and collaboration.
Our annual fellowship program brings together faculty, postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate fellows to pursue research and discuss their work-in-progress in a dynamic workshop setting. We offer cutting-edge courses at the graduate and undergraduate level, as well as two doctoral certificates, one in Collaborative Humanities, featuring team-taught seminars on transdisciplinary topics, and one on Digital Humanities, exploring digital methods and practices in humanities research.
A rich array of programming including lecture series, conferences, and colloquia enhances our core research and curricular mission, creating a lively space of inquiry and dialogue that draws in faculty, students, and members of the larger Providence community.
Founded in the fall of 2003 as the Brown Humanities Center, the Cogut Institute for the Humanities was named in 2005 for Craig (’75) and Deborah Cogut in recognition of their generous support.
Amanda Anderson, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English, has served as director since 2015. Her predecessors include Mary Ann Doane and Carolyn Dean as interim directors of the Brown Humanities Center and Michael P. Steinberg as director of the Cogut Center for the Humanities from 2005 to 2015. Timothy Bewes served as interim director in the 2019–20 academic year.
In 2006, the institute launched the Fellows Seminar, welcoming an inaugural cohort of Faculty Fellows and Distinguished Visiting Fellows. The seminar has hosted Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows and Graduate Fellows since 2006–2007, International Humanities Postdoctoral Fellows since 2007–2008, and Undergraduate Fellows since 2008–2009.
Pembroke Hall, home to the institute until 2024
In 2008 and 2009, the institute began offering undergraduate and graduate seminars to complement and expand the humanities curriculum by spotlighting interdisciplinary topics and faculty research projects. The institute has also played an active role in undergraduate and graduate education through grant programs that support student research on and off campus. Since 2007, the institute has sponsored the participation of Brown University graduate students in the School of Criticism and Theory, an international summer course of study in critical theory hosted by Cornell University.
In 2010, the institute began administering Brown University’s Humanities Initiative. Through the initiative, scholars are appointed on the basis of high-profile research and commitment to cross-disciplinary teaching and collaborations.
In 2017, the institute was formally elevated from a center to an institute to reflect its expanded mission and scope. A $1.3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supported the launch of the Doctoral Certificate in Collaborative Humanities. Programming initiated that same year in the environmental humanities led to the establishment in 2024 of the Center for Environmental Humanities at Brown. In 2019, the institute became home to the Center for the Study of the Early Modern World. The Center for Digital Scholarship and the institute have partnered since 2022 to offer the Doctoral Certificate in Digital Humanities.
Andrews House, home to the institute since 2024
The institute has enriched the humanities on campus through a variety of programs. Lecture series hosted at the institute have included the Hannah Arendt Seminars (2006–2014), the Creative Medicine lecture Series (2010–2019), the Romanticism Workshop (2014–2018), PITH – Politics in the Humanities (2015–2020), Film-Thinking (since 2019) as well as the Sarah Cutts Frerichs Lecture in Victorian Studies (since 2008; named for Sarah Cutts Frerichs AM’49 PhD’74) and the Greg and Julie Flynn Cogut Institute Speaker Series (since 2018; named for Gregory G. Flynn ’86, P’20, P’20 and Julie A. Flynn P’20, P’20).
As a research hub on campus, the institute sponsors broad multi-year initiatives and projects that promote active dialogue on some of the most challenging questions facing humanities scholars. The institute has worked with partners both on and off campus, including in Cuba, New York, Milan, Berlin, Nazareth, and Nanjing. Between 2006 and 2011, it collaborated on several occasions with the Daniel Barenboim Foundation and West-Eastern Divan Institute. It has been a partner in the Nanjing/Brown Joint Program in Gender Studies and Humanities founded in 2007. It housed the French Center of Excellence (2017–2024) and Black Visualities Initiative (2019–2022). Current initiatives and major projects include the Collaborative Humanities Initiative, the Disability Studies Working Group, Economies of Aesthetics, Humanities in the World, and Political Concepts.
In 2024, the Cogut Institute moved from Pembroke Hall, also home to the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, to Andrews House, newly renovated and restored by Goody Clancy.
