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The Humanities Center

This is a crucial moment for Georgetown to revolutionize our capacity to teach, study, and apply the disciplines that are central to our Jesuit heritage—and to our students’ future success as critical thinkers and problem solvers.

The world needs leaders who can address complex, urgent problems in a human-centered way. Especially as quantitative disciplines like science, technology, and engineering shape our future, we must ensure that the humanities—so essential to understanding our lives, our values, and our ambitions—stay in lockstep.

The humanities have been a core element of every Georgetown undergraduate’s education since the university’s founding. With strategic investments in faculty expertise, student research, public engagement, and interdisciplinary collaboration, Georgetown’s Humanities Center will continue to distinguish and elevate our community’s contributions for decades to come.

“The Humanities are fields of study that examine problems by crossing boundaries. We’ve seen the consequences of acting without empathy or understanding for other people. The Humanities bring together faculty, students, alumni, and the greater community to help create a world more centered on caring for the whole person.”

—Nicoletta Pireddu, inaugural director, Georgetown Humanities Initiative

Our foundation and our future

Increasingly, the most pressing questions arise where established disciplines meet each other. Through the Humanities Center, we will break down silos and build networks that deploy critical fields to their fullest potential:

  • Art and Art History
  • Classics
  • English
  • History
  • Film and Media Studies
  • Foreign Languages
  • Linguistics
  • Performing Arts
  • Philosophy
  • Theology and Religious Studies

Critical opportunities ahead

To secure and amplify Georgetown’s established strengths in the study and application of the humanities, we must make significant and new investments.

  • Preparing skilled graduates

    The humanities curriculum shapes every Georgetown student’s formation. Donor support will enable the Humanities Center to offer firsthand creative and research experiences to more undergraduates, preparing students to translate their distinctive education into action as they set out to become leaders in their fields. Career roundtables, meanwhile, will prepare students for professions that leverage their well-honed communication and critical-thinking skills, and benefit from a humanist approach.

  • Growing our faculty expertise

    We must invest in our faculty—top scholars who advance their fields, inspire future leaders, and apply their insights to pressing challenges like climate change, public health, and racial justice. By adding new cohorts of interdisciplinary chairs and visiting fellows, we will accelerate cutting-edge work and cross-campus collaboration.

  • Increasing public engagement

    The Humanities Center will increase the points of connection between Georgetown’s humanities community and outside partners, highlighting these fields’ broad impact. Gifts to the Humanities Center will enable us to welcome a diverse cohort of Community Fellows-in-Residence. Fellows’ scholarship and research will create a bridge between the humanities and the challenges facing our community’s educators, residents, business leaders, and policymakers.

    Philanthropy also will help create the Humanities Symposium, an opportunity to facilitate dialogues among scholars and public intellectuals and use arts and culture as a tool for understanding pressing problems.

  • Creating collaborative spaces

    Since its founding, Georgetown has been infused with the humanities—but there has never been a dedicated space for humanities-focused resources and interactions. We seek to establish a digital humanities lab where faculty, students, and visiting fellows can collaborate to address problems at the intersection of the humanities and fields such as medicine, business, and environmental science.

    Donor support also will be crucial as we work to develop a Humanities Corridor, transforming McNair Auditorium and surrounding facilities into a flexible space where people can come together to advance this important work.

The humanities in action

New Voices on the Environment Series a Success – Georgetown Humanities Initiative

med school undergrads

Krishnan leads Medical Humanities Initiative | Georgetown Humanities Initiative | Georgetown University

fall tree

Spotlight on Humanities Pedagogy: Dr. Ayten Tartici’s “Hyphenated Americans”

Help build on this tradition

We need leaders who can think critically, creatively, and compassionately: doctors who have the historical context to shrink health disparities, journalists who can discern the truth, policymakers who understand the human impact of their proposals.

Gifts to the Humanities Center will make it possible for Georgetown to assert the humanities’ role in understanding and improving our world—as only Georgetown can.

Thank you for your consideration as we deepen our commitment to solving problems in a human-centered way, grounded in our rich Catholic and Jesuit tradition. To learn more or to contribute to these priorities, please contact us at giving@georgetown.edu.