At ASU, Health Humanities works to transcend these disciplinary and institutional boundaries by bringing academics, clinicians, caregivers and students together to address grand social challenges in areas of health and healthcare and to explore strategies for promoting, sustaining and reimagining health and resilience in individuals and communities. 

With the growing interest in refocusing on the human being at the center of American health care, the initiative promotes understanding and scholarship through a new health humanities certificate program, designed to education a new generation of health leaders and professionals, a lecture series and collaborations with physician leading Mayo Clinic's Medical Humanities initiative and the Institute for Humanities Research at ASU. 

The environmental humanities bring humanists together with social scientists and scientists to improve human wellbeing, promote justice, and protect earth’s life support systems. The field builds on more than 30 years of scholarship in history, literature, philosophy, religion, anthropology, ethnic studies, gender, film, art and music focused on human relationship to other humans and to other species in a rapidly changing world. 

Since 2006, Arizona State University has counted some of the founders of the field among its faculty and actively hired some of the brightest emerging scholars. In 2016, the Environmental Humanities Initiative (EHI) was launched to network faculty from 22 different schools and departments across four of ASU’s campuses. In education, undergraduates can earn certificates in environmental humanities and food systems. Associated faculty also teach a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses exploring the full interdisciplinary nature of interlinked social and environmental systems. There are also annual lectures open to the public.

In addition, the initiative serves as headquarters of the North American Observatory, part of an international system of Humanities Observatories and contributes to the PLuS (Phoenix - London – Sydney) Alliance, a collaboration between three globally-focused universities working together to innovate a sustainable future.

The digital humanities are concerned with humanities questions through digital means, such as digital archives, tool and algorithm building, large data set visualization, 3-D modeling of historical material objects, social media analysis, multimedia and multimodal exhibits, born-digital publications, narrative video games and search and discovery digital tools.

Current projects supported by the Digital Humanities Initiative include:

• An on-paper prototype for a feminist video game tracking the experience of a migrant mother crossing the U.S.–Mexico border.
• A new digital tool for student survivors of sexual assault at Arizona State University. Learn more about MyChoice.
• The 2019 Digital Humanities and Pedagogy Institute that connects ASU faculty, Maricopa County Community College faculty and graduate students to think about using digital tools in the classroom. 

Deserts are demanding and pose large questions to us—questions that invite ecological solutions at scale. With this simple yet fundamental frame in mind, the Desert Humanities explores our cultural comportment within the environment of the desert Southwest and innovates ways of reconfiguring cultural habits that determine how we bear upon this world. Desert Humanities is committed to life in the desert through building resilient communities and sustainable futures with attention to wellbeing, which is fundamentally a matter of understanding culture, ideas, religion and society.

ASU’s Desert Humanities initiative’s mission is specific and inclusive, focusing upon collaboration and community-building as the best means of producing new knowledge.

Why is religion an accelerating, often divisive political and public force? How do religious ideas and practices shape or constrain ideals of democracy, human rights, and global citizenship? How can understanding religious aims for bettering humanity recast questions of scientific and technological innovation, climate change, and human progress? What visions and values does religion offer for imagining and building a more just, peaceful and equitable world? 

The Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict generates innovative thinking on these and other questions through a transdisciplinary approach that:

• Connects the campus and the community through education and outreach
• Serves scholars, practitioners, policymakers and the public
• Builds global networks through international exchange
• Prepares the next generation of students for an increasingly interconnected and complex world.

The center houses an array of collaborative research initiatives that engage the complicated role of religion, for good and ill, across societies and cultures. The center’s groundbreaking work has been supported by many foundations and agencies, including the National Science Foundation; National Endowment for the Humanities; the Departments of Defense and State; the U.S. Agency for International Development; and the Ford, Henry Luce and Templeton Foundations.

A robust mix of student programs advance undergraduate education, and the Center’s signature lecture series engages the public in expanding knowledge, enhancing cross-cultural dialogue, and promoting wiser, more effective responses.

The Center for Science and the Imagination: Dreaming, making and sharing better futures

The Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University brings together diverse networks of people to imagine and create research-based visions of the future. We use storytelling, design and other creative methods to explore scientific frontiers and emerging technologies. Our work involves thinking deeply (and on occasion, whimsically) about a broad spectrum of possible futures and insisting upon our ability – and responsibility – to actively pursue and build the futures we want to live in together. The center serves as a network hub for humanities scholars, authors, artists, scientists, engineers, teachers and other experts to collaborate on audacious ideas and reignite humanity’s grand ambitions for innovation and discovery.

Our major programs include Hieroglyph, a public community of science fiction authors, scientists and researchers as well as a series of anthologies featuring gripping, thought-provoking stories about the near future; the Frankenstein Bicentennial Project, which explores science in society through a modern myth of creativity and responsibility; and Sprint Beyond the Book, a series of public experiments that explore the complex and exciting future of reading, writing and publishing in our digital age.  

The Center for Imagination in the Borderlands is an Indigenous space at ASU where we constellate stories, knowledges, and language across our many borderlands through strategic and exploratory modes of research, conversation and performance. Essential to our understanding of Indigineity is a kinship with the land, a connection that moves beyond “where we are” or “how we got here” and represents an evolving awareness and practice of relationality with land, water, and other human and non-human life. The imaginations shaped in this desert and in these bordered lands are capable of influencing and catalyzing the futures we believe we deserve. The Center for Imagination in the Borderlands is part of the humanities division of The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU.

The Center for Film, Media and Popular Culture explores the role film and media play in shaping popular culture, human values and global communications. It does so by building partnerships between Arizona State University students and faculty, the larger Phoenix metro-community, and the entertainment industry. The center sponsors community film screening, lectures, and special events; supports students via scholarships and internships; pursues research grants and entrepreneurial industry partnerships; and hosts faculty fellows.