The past academic year was an extraordinary time of growth for the Cogut Institute, as key projects came to fruition. The Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB) initiative, which has been an important part of the institute since 2018, was elevated into a full-fledged center, directed by environmental scholar Macarena Gómez-Barris. This new center, housed within the institute, will have the capacity and infrastructure to advance critical research and curricula in the coming years. We also established our first multi-year collaborative humanities lab, “Models-Scale-Context: AI and the Humanities,” led by historian Holly Case and computer scientist Suresh Venkatasubramanian. It is thrilling to see the constellation of leaders and projects within the institute expand in this way. These new formations join a series of initiatives that have been making vital contributions over the past year, including the Disability Studies Working Group, which has sponsored events and networking opportunities, as well as the popular Film-Thinking series, which combines eclectic film showings with dynamic panel discussions and audience Q&A.
This is a vibrant and transformative time in the humanities, and we are excited to be a part of it. Despite claims regularly made in the media that the academic humanities are in decline, the work we do is increasingly important in the face of global challenges such as climate change, artificial intelligence, and public health. In our increasingly interconnected world, policy makers, scientists and technologists, and practitioners of all sorts turn to humanities experts for crucial perspectives on the historical and cultural archive and on questions of values and ethics. The humanities are also thriving on their own terms outside the academy, as the lively world of book and film criticism, podcasts, and online cultural commentary attests.
At the material level, the humanities here at Brown will be enhanced by the institute’s new space on campus. In summer 2024, as part of Brown’s commitment to growing research across the University, the institute relocated to the beautifully renovated Andrews House on Brown Street, which provides significantly more room to host events, courses, fellows, and doctoral students. The carefully redesigned building and grounds, planned by the Boston architectural firm of Goody Clancy, includes collaborative and community spaces along with offices for individual fellows. We are especially pleased to be able to provide social and study space for our undergraduate fellows, our certificate students, and our postdoctoral fellows. Versatile event spaces will be open and available for programming by departments and programs across the humanities, with the aim of making Andrews House a welcoming home for the community more broadly.
In spring of 2024, we talked with students and faculty members in the institute’s Doctoral Certificate in Collaborative Humanities program about their research and teaching. They described how they came to interdisciplinary and collaborative work as a way of enriching their research and writing and answering large, systemic questions. Building community among scholars in the humanities and across the University is crucial to the engaged, creative scholarship being done at Brown today. I hope you will take some time to listen to these interviews, which are included in this annual report.
We at the Cogut Institute are continually inspired by the extraordinary work being done by faculty and students in the humanities at Brown. We hope you too will be inspired as you explore our report of the institute’s activities in 2023–24.
Thank you for your support of the Cogut Institute and of the humanities at Brown.