Brown University Cogut Institute for the Humanities

09/04/2026

Join the Cogut Institute for “Doctoral Futures,” a conversation with Modern Language Association (MLA) Executive Director Paula Krebs, Monday, September 14, 4 pm on campus

The conversation will explore the Mellon-funded “Doctoral Futures” initiative. The MLA is partnering with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Historical Association, and the Society of Biblical Literature on this collaborative initiative to reimagining the humanities Ph.D., with a focus on building equitable, resilient, and career-diverse programs.

Dr. Krebs will give a short presentation, to be followed by an interview with Senior Associate Dean Zachary Sng and an open Q&A session with the audience. A small reception will conclude the event.

Presented by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, the Center for Languages Studies, and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities.

Read more: https://buff.ly/wQKXxIp

09/02/2026

Join the Cogut Institute for the Humanities for “Humanists on Education,” Friday, September 11, 1–2:30 pm on campus.

Education is what brings us all together at Brown, students and faculty alike. It’s our mission. It fills us with energy. It fuels our curiosity, our puzzlement, and our discoveries. And yet it takes many forms. Come hear what education means for a specialist in education, a historian, a scholar of religion, and the Dean of the College!

The conversation will feature Mahasan Chaney (Education), Tara Nummedal (History), and Andre C. Willis (Religious Studies), with brief opening remarks by Ethan Po***ck, Dean of the College as well as Abbott Gleason University Professor of History and Professor of Slavic Studies. Shelley Lee, Director of the Cogut Institute, will moderate.

The event will be followed by the Cogut Institute’s annual welcome reception in the Andrews House garden. We hope to see you at this event as well!

About the speakers: https://events.brown.edu/cogut/event/humanists-on-education

08/31/2026

Join us on Tuesday, September 29 from 4 - 5:30 pm for “Latinx Studies: Origins, Crossroads, Futures” with acclaimed historian Natalia Molina. This talk reflects on Latinx Studies, a field Molina has helped shape over the past 25 years, examining where it has been, where it stands today, and where it might go. Molina considers how Latinx Studies, as a subfield of Ethnic Studies, has challenged scholars to read dominant archives against the grain while creating new forms of collective knowledge rooted in community histories, memory, and lived experience.

Following the talk, Molina will be joined in conversation by Shelley Lee (Cogut Institute, American Studies, History) and Gina Pérez (Comparative American Studies | Oberlin College), co-hosts of “The Confluence: Ethnic Studies and the Public Good” podcast.

https://events.brown.edu/cogut/event/molina



Photo by Jamie Pham

08/25/2026

07/30/2026

“If we recognize the plurality of approaches, frameworks, and methods in the humanities — and I would contradistinguish this from viewpoints — if you recognize that and seek to cultivate that and seek to cultivate value clarification, then you’re basically doing the crucial work of civic education all the time.” — Amanda Anderson (Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English and outgoing Director of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University)

Listen to “Stop Ruminating (Or Don’t)” on the podcast “The Confluence: Ethnic Studies and the Public Good”: https://buff.ly/arXJOfl

07/27/2026

“Defending the humanities is tough because, as I have argued in ‘Humanities Theory,’ the humanities are, at some level, not given authority as a cultural speaker. I mean, you see this in gendered instances all the time in a seminar room, where certain people with certain identities are accorded authority and others aren’t — and so, as I’ve said, I think the humanities is gaslighted quite frequently and as a kind of general cultural fact.” — Amanda Anderson (Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English and outgoing Director of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University)

Listen to “Stop Ruminating (Or Don’t)” on the podcast “The Confluence: Ethnic Studies and the Public Good”: https://buff.ly/arXJOfl

07/23/2026

In “Stop Ruminating (Or Don’t),” the 4th and final episode of season 1 of the podcast “The Confluence: Ethnic Studies and the Public Good,” host Shelley Lee sits down with Amanda Anderson, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English and outgoing Director of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University. Their conversation ranges across the definition and defense of the humanities, the concept of “value clarification” as the distinct work of humanistic inquiry, and the challenges posed by AI and shrinking attention spans to the conditions necessary for deep thinking. They also take up Amanda’s forthcoming book on rumination, the politics of viewpoint diversity, and the interconnected fates of the humanities, the university, and democracy.

https://buff.ly/arXJOfl

07/22/2026

“My goal is to have a world where nobody says to me anymore, ‘Why did I never learn that?’ That’s my goal, in part. I want whatever we can do to help people who want to learn or want to know more, who are curious to be able to find ways to address that curiosity.” — Renee Romano (Emeritus Professor of History at Oberlin College and co-founder of Romano and Min Projects)

Listen to “Beyond the Ivory Tower: Public Humanities and Historical Memory”: https://buff.ly/JpxjGdN

07/20/2026

“I have experienced a lot of Black history tours or exhibitions that were not created by Black people, that were not created in community. And they’re missing a lot. And I’m not saying that they’re not worth trying, but my biggest pet peeve is when mainstream museums just say, ‘We’re doing a Black history exhibit,’ or, ‘We’re doing a Black art show,’ and expect people to come without doing the work of relationship building to make people feel safe to be there.” — Gaila Sims (public historian and museum educator)

Listen to “Beyond the Ivory Tower: Public Humanities and Historical Memory”: https://buff.ly/JpxjGdN

07/17/2026

“Ethnic Studies’ coming in and becoming more institutionalized in the university is one of the factors that transform public humanities from being largely translational, vertical, top down — the scholars speaking to the public in ways that they think the public will understand — to being horizontal and collaborative, exactly what Gaila’s talking about, seeing the public as holders of knowledge, as holders of experience, as groups with which you co-create knowledge rather than informing them about existing scholarship that you’re just translating to them. So I think Ethnic Studies has played a role in democratizing and making public humanities a more meaningful practice with communities.” — Renee Romano (Emeritus Professor of History at Oberlin College and co-founder of Romano and Min Projects)

Listen to “Beyond the Ivory Tower: Public Humanities and Historical Memory”: https://buff.ly/JpxjGdN