BU Center for the Humanities

🚨 Faculty opportunity 🚨

The Center for Media Innovation & Social Impact at Boston University invites applications to its 2026-27 Trust and Storytelling Fellowship. The fellowship is a nine-month experience (September 2026 – May 2027) that brings together academics, artists, journalists, and organizers to explore the power of storytelling for social impact. Supported by BU’s Center for Humanities, BU’s College of Communication, and the Mellon Foundation, the program aims to support fellows in transforming humanistic research, organizational practices, and data into meaningful and effective stories.

Find out more here: https://sites.bu.edu/misi/trust-and-storytelling-fellowship/

Earlier this month, the Center, along with the CAS Core Curriculum and the AI Development Accelerator, hosted The AI Free Classroom, where attendees could discover new strategies and discuss ideas with faculty who have elected to keep artificial intelligence tools out of their classroom.

Swipe through for our photo recap!

The last play in the Boston Playwrights' Theatre, Zabel in Exile, is opening this week!

Get your tickets here: https://www.bostonplaywrights.org/our-25-26-season

A little more about Zabel in Exile:
Yerevan, 1937. Armenian writer and activist Zabel Yessayan sits in a Soviet prison cell, awaiting ex*****on. But what exactly is her crime? Writing novels? Knowing how to speak French? Being a woman? As Zabel confronts her captors, past and present blur, and she reckons with the injustices she has witnessed and confronted—from schoolyard bullying to the horrors of genocide.

Zabel in Exile is a searing memory play that honors the strength of a woman unafraid to stand up to tyranny and wrestles with whether it is possible to continue to believe in light during times of endless darkness.

The Center's former Associate Director, associate professor of religion and African American and Black diaspora studies Margarita Guillory, has been featured in BU Today!

Check out the article here: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2026/religion-ai-god-chatbots

On March 4th, the BU Center for Humanities will be sponsoring an Audio Production Workshop at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre! This event is free and open to the public. Please use the following link to RSVP on Eventbrite, as tickets are limited:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-world-according-to-sound-an-audio-workshop-tickets-1981449798687

Full description below:

This workshop will introduce students to the wide potential of audio as a medium and the skills they'll need to produce their own work. The aim is to show students that the world of podcasting and audio production is vast, and encompasses much more than mere interview- or narrative-driven works. The session is half listening and learning to dissect audio pieces (from soundscapes and sound art, to news spots and features), and half hands-on technical training about recording, interviewing, writing for audio, and mixing.

Join the BU Center for Humanities for an exciting public humanities event on Wednesday, March 4th! This immersive sound experience is free and will take place at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre. Please use the following link to RSVP on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-world-according-to-sound-at-boston-university-tickets-1980555938126?aff=oddtdtcreator

“All human societies name. We name people, places and things......How a society names can tell us a lot about the concepts, attitudes and values that define it.”

In her article “Trump’s idea to rename Veterans Day fizzled for a good reason,” published by the LA Times, Joanna Davidson (AN) writes about the study of naming practices that she pursued during her fellowship.

Read more here: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-11-11/veterans-day-trump-renaming

Ready for a marathon? Boston Playwrights' Theatre will host Boston Theater Marathon XXVII May 4, 11am-10pm, at 949 Commonwelath Ave. BTM features 50 ten-minute plays written by New England playwrights and presented by New England theatre companies.

Learn more and purchase tickets here: https://www.bostonplaywrights.org/btm-xxvii

Join us to celebrate Robert Pinsky’s retirement from BU, where he taught for 36 years, at his Poetry Reading and Retirement party tomorrow, May 1st, from 7-9pm.
This event will take place at 665 Commonwealth Avenue (17th floor, Room 1750).
Pinsky is also the founder of the Favorite Poem Project, which will find its new home at the Center starting in June . Read the full article on Pinsky's legacy below.

Robert Pinsky, America’s Ambassador for Poetry, Retiring from Teaching after 36 Years at BU, More Than 1,000 Students University will honor the award-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate Thursday, when he’ll do a public reading

Associate Professor of Philosophy Marc Gasser-Wingate knows classical philosophers can feel far away. “I'm focused on preserving and articulating the thoughts of [philosophical] figures, in a way that makes it possible for them to still be a part of our ongoing conversations on these questions”. One way he’s keeping this discourse alive is by making these ancient philosophers more accessible using digital tools. Read more here: https://www.bu.edu/humanities/2025/04/28/bu-humanists-at-work-marc-gasser-wingate-associate-professor-of-philosophy/

Congratulations to Louis Chude-Sokei and Bruce J. Schulman for receiving the Guggenheim Fellowship! English Professor Louis Chude-Sokei will use the award to finish his new book and expand his international sonic art project. BU's William E. Huntington Professor of History, Bruce J. Schulman, is planning to use the fellowship to contribute to the multivolume Oxford History of the United States.

Read more here: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2025/guggenheim-fellowships-awarded-to-six-bu-researchers-and-scholars/?utm_campaign=bu_today&utm_source=email_20250418_full&utm_medium=2_must_read_1&utm_content

Happy Giving Day! Make a gift this April 9th to support the humanities at BU. The Center for the Humanities funds undergraduate and graduate summer internships, faculty research, public programming, and more.

Give here: https://trusted.bu.edu/s/1759/22/form.aspx?sid=1759&gid=2&pgid=481&cid=1146&dids=523&appealcode=WEBCAS