Princeton‘s new Humanities Initiative, established in July 2024 to increase cross-department collaboration in the humanities and beyond, will hold a conference in April with a group of community colleges, Director Rachael DeLue told The Daily Princetonian in an interview.
“We’re putting together a convention for April that will hopefully lead to other convenings and meetings and workshops and planning sessions all focused on figuring out and thinking together about what the humanities are in community colleges, how to expand and amplify the humanities and community college education,” DeLue explained. The convention will be developed in collaboration with the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, and the New Jersey Council for Community Colleges, which represents the state’s 18 community colleges.
DeLue has also been in conversation with Princeton public schools to develop enrichment programs for students of all ages. One idea she has is bringing the Princeton Pre-read to 11th- and 12th-graders. “It’s always a really interesting book, and it’s … compelling to a wide range of audiences,” DeLue said. “We’re thinking about the possibility of having groups from the high school read that book … and then bringing those high school students and Princeton freshmen together to talk about the book.”
The Humanities Initiative has also made an offer for a new Executive Director to help lead strategic planning, although DeLue said the relevant paperwork had not been signed at the time of publication.
Following the first meeting of a new steering committee in December, the Initiative is set to continue an interdisciplinary approach towards establishing yet another body: the Humanities Institute, a governing entity planned to manage all humanities-related events, classes, and collaborations between disciplines.
Professor Federico Marcon, Chair of the Department of East Asian Studies and a member of the Steering Committee, told the ‘Prince’ that the Institute “will be the house of all humanistic faculty, graduate [and undergraduate] students, and departments within the University.”
“In the long run,” Marcon continued, “an Institute should also be conceived literally. There should be a place really recognizable as such, with more robust administrations targeted to coordinating the different aspects of humanistic research.”
The development of the Institute’s governing body is currently on a three-year plan: the first year remaining organizational; the second overseeing the implementation of ideas and events; and the third officially establishing the Institute in Princeton.
The committee is also hoping to introduce new classes to humanities across Princeton.
“I’m hoping by the end of that three-year run, we will have some really interesting classes in place,” DeLue expressed. “A lot of us are talking about classes that get outside of the classroom … The humanities aren’t always associated with lab work or field work, right? And we would love to make classes that are about field work and lab work.”
“In the sciences, collaboration is quite common, and you get industry grants or outside grants or government grants to fund it,” Professor Benjamin Morison, a member of the Steering Committee and the Chair of the Department of Philosophy, told the ‘Prince.’ “That’s harder in the humanities, so we just want to foster the kind of atmosphere which encourages the collaborations that people want to do but didn’t think it was possible to do.”
“One thing that the Humanities Initiative wants to do is to treat performances … for what it is, which is another way of doing the humanities,” Morison said. “There could be all sorts of collaborations. My mind spins, you know — philosophy and the performing arts. How would that work? I don’t even know how that would work. But asking the question, could there be something there that we could do that? These are the questions which the Humanities Initiative wants to ask.”
The Humanities Initiative will also be expanding and hosting more events alongside plans for the Institute. DeLue explained that the Initiative is similar to running a startup. “One of the major things I’m doing is talking to as many people as I can, asking them what they think this should be? Because I don’t want to build something that isn’t useful or inspiring to people. I want it to serve people on campus and … people off campus.”
DeLue shared some more on the role of the new executive director. “He and I are going to put a strategic plan together that projects … what we want this to look like by 2027,” DeLue said. “I’m working really closely with The Office of the Provost and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, who are two of the major drivers for this.”
“The only limits to what the Humanities Institute can accomplish depends only on the limits of the creativity of all the humanistic faculty on campus,” Marcon shared with the ‘Prince.’ “It will be a place where our creativity, our ideas, our projects, can really find accomplishments.”
Marcon explained how the Institute will help students live to the University’s unofficial motto, “In the Service of Humanity.”
“It will give our students a command in language, and in these processes of meaning making, so they will become more reflective and conscious and responsible members of society.”
Luke Grippo is a staff News writer for the ‘Prince.’ He is from South Jersey and usually covers administrative issues, including USG, the CPUC, and institutional legacy, but loves to write in any area.
Please send corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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