Project Humanities brings together individuals and communities, within and around Arizona State University, to instill passion and knowledge of humanities study, research, and humanist thought. By exploring shared ideas and experiences, Project Humanities facilitates conversations across diverse communities to build understanding through talking, listening, and connecting.

An award-winning initiative at ASU, Project Humanities facilitates critical conversations with individuals and communities across disciplines, generations and professions. In just under four years, we have become a leader in local, national and international conversations about our shared humanity.

Under the banner of our Project Humanities efforts, we created Humanity 101 as a toolbox of diverse programs and activities which focus on the question: “Are we losing our humanity?”  Our response to this question is an ambitious Movement to prove that humanity is bound by shared experiences, instead of the social disconnect and divisiveness suggested by current headlines and news stories. Indeed, this movement creates local synergy, empowerment and awareness through our seven Humanity 101 principles: kindness, compassion, integrity, respect, empathy, forgiveness and self-reflection.

The ASU Department of English’s Prison Education Programming (PEP—formerly Prison English) begins with a belief that education is a right that inheres within our humanity. It is not a right that stops at a prison’s gates. Education needs to traverse borders and boundaries, including prison boundaries. 

More than 30 faculty members, graduate students and staff work with the Arizona Department of Corrections and new Mexico Corrections Department and an advisory committee to offer more than 30 weekly classes to inmates. The courses range from English and creative writing to biology, drama, art and philosophy, math, psychology, languages and public speaking.  

The Narrative Storytelling Initiative is led by Steven Beschloss and dedicated to expanding the population of knowledgeable narrators and enhancing the quality and scale of their public engagement.

The mission of the History Project is to preserve and communicate the history of science at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Mass. The laboratory opened its doors in 1888, and since then has housed some of the most foundational and groundbreaking science and science education in the world.

To preserve the institution's 125+ year history, we work with the MBL Library and Archives to digitize their archival materials. Over 10,000 photographs, pieces of correspondence, and records of science have been digitized and made publically available through the MBL History Project’s website and the HPS Repository.

To communicate the vast and important history of science and its surrounding community at the MBL, researchers from Arizona State University and institutions from around the world convene in Woods Hole, Mass., every summer. This group conducts oral histories with scientists and community members, which are edited and published on YouTube. They also write digital exhibits—short narratives about some aspect of the history of science at the MBL that get published to the project’s website along with digitized materials from the archives. These exhibits bring together the history and philosophy of science with the life sciences in order to communicate the context and development of science to a broad, general audience.

The MBL History Project is funded by the National Science Foundation, Arizona State University, the Webster Foundation, and the James S. McDonnell Foundation.

Our global community faces a seemingly never-ending list of serious challenges –terrorism, emerging diseases, climate change, to name a few. 

To tackle such complex challenges, we need to marshal all the scientific, technological, political and economic tools we have, but we also need people who have the ethical vision and the moral will to use those tools effectively.

Ethical action is not always easy and it is not always clear. The Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics supports research and education that will guide and direct ethical action and will develop the next generation of moral actors. To discover more, go to ethics@asu.

Jewish Studies is an interdisciplinary academic program and research center hybrid. The Center for Jewish Studies focuses on knowledge production and community engagement through research conferences, public lectures, exhibits, films and concerts.

Working in collaboration with Jewish institutions and civic organizations in metropolitan Phoenix, the Center for Jewish Studies focuses on Judaism, science, and medicine; Judaism and the arts; Post-Holocaust Jewish life and Jewish diasporas.

Awarded through the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, the Jewish Studies program offers a BA and a certificate in Jewish Studies, as well as a vast array of undergraduate courses in the humanities and the social sciences. Graduate-level courses that lead to master's and doctoral degrees are also available through the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies; the School of International Letters and Cultures; the Department of English and the School of Social Transformation.

Together the Jewish Studies program and the Center for Jewish Studies foster critical inquiry as they disseminate accurate information about the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present. With nationally and international renowned faculty, ASU Jewish Studies enhances the quality of Jewish life in the ASU community, in Phoenix metropolitan area and around the world.

The Humanities Lab is a research-drive incubator for social change. It provides students with the opportunity to engage in hands-on research on compelling social challenges of interest to today’s students while working with others who are also invested in making a difference.

Humanities Labs are premised on the belief that technology alone will not resolve contemporary public health, civil rights and environmental crises. Humanities Labs bring diverse (and often historically excluded) stakeholders together and foreground the connectedness of humanity in the web of life as a teaching and learning philosophy, and in this way enable collaborative approaches that go beyond traditional academic boundaries and build bridges to new ways of knowing, doing and being.

Co-directors and associate professors Heather Switzer and Juliann Vitullo welcome your ideas for new labs, your collaboration, experience, point-of-view, and networks of passionate colleagues and community partners.

Through the Humanities Institute, humanities scholars collaborate with each other and with researchers across the university to address our most fundamental and challenging “big questions”: Who are we? Why are we here? What do we value and why? Where did we come from? Where are we going and how will we get there? Questions such as these lie at the heart of what have been called “wicked problems,” those challenges that require the combined efforts of scholars in many disciplines to find solutions that are complex and transdisciplinary in their scope. They include such global and urgent problems as climate change, terrorism, homelessness and health disparities. Infusing humanistic perspectives into academic initiatives addressing these challenges, the Humanities Institute is at the center of an engaged university research enterprise making a difference in the world.

All are welcome to attend our many events throughout the year, from small workshops on specialized topics to large lectures with scholars such as Lauren Berlant, Alan Lightman and Zadie Smith. Arizona State University faculty can form research clusters around areas of shared interest or apply for funding in the form of fellowships, seed grants, and subventions. The Humanities Institute also encourages transdisciplinary research that contributes to our special initiatives--including digital, environmental, medical and urban humanities—and encourages outreach and involvement with arts and other kinds of institutions in the greater Phoenix community.

Bringing together history, philosophy, and the sciences illuminates the way science is done. History examines the development of science over time, while philosophy gets at the nature or science by looking at how science works. The history and philosophy of science (HPS), as this field is called, shows that scientists ask the big questions that are typically considered humanities questions: what is life, who are we, where did we come from, how can we achieve a good life, and such. In carrying out scientific research, researchers make choices and are driven by underlying assumptions all the time. They usually do not articulate those assumptions, however.

Through our projects, we work with scientists to probe those assumptions and choices.  Sometimes we work historically, drawing from documents of the past to interpret the choices being made. At other times, we work with the scientists directly. A new collaboration with the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and our research with colleagues in the School of Life Sciences allow us to carry out work at the core of the humanities alongside scientists. As a result, our understanding of the history and nature of science improves and so does the work in the life sciences. Together we can ask new questions, drawing on integrated methods and shared perspectives.

The Hispanic Research Center is a university-wide, interdisciplinary research unit founded in 1985, it conducts basic and applied research on a broad range of topics related to Hispanic studies, disseminates research findings to the academic community and the public, and provides public service in areas of importance to Hispanics.

Its affiliated faculty, staff and advanced graduate students are organized into working groups dedicated to a range of research projects in the humanities, arts, education, science and technology, business, information technology and new media, and other fields. Current and ongoing projects in the humanities include examination of the role of birds such as the eagle and the resplendent quetzal in Aztec, Maya, and Mixtec cultural beliefs; research on the impact of Franciscanism in colonial Latin America; and study of the history and work of Chicana/o artists. The Hispanic Research Center holds a major art history archive of Chicana/o artists that is available for study by researchers and students.

The Hispanic Research Center faculty includes a number of educators who have earned national awards for their work, including: the Charles A. Dana Foundation Award for Pioneering Achievement in Education, the 2002 Art Educator of the Year Award from the National Art Education Association. Ongoing activities of the Hispanic Research Center, primarily funded by external grants, include the Bilingual Press, the Community Art and Research Outreach, More Graduate Education at Mountain States Alliance (MGE@MSA), and the Western Alliance to Expand Student Opportunities.