Society for the Humanities

📣 Were you part of the Society’s earliest years? 📣 Even before the Andrew Dickson White House became our home, the Society for the Humanities was already building an intellectual community that would shape generations of scholars. As we mark 60 years, we’re giving a special shout to Fellows from the 1960s and 1970s, those who helped define what the Society would become. 🎓 All previous Society fellows are invited to join us in Ithaca on September 18-19, 2026 to celebrate, reconnect, and reflect at our 60th anniversary celebration. Know someone from those early cohorts? Pass this along. We would love to see them. Initial RSVP by May 31, 2026. Link in bio. #SHUM60 #CornellHumanities #Humanities #AcademicCommunity #HumanitiesHistory

Spring Research Conference Preview: Humanities scholars tackle research across disciplines Click the link in @cornellhsp ’s bio to read the preview of this year’s conference, featuring the research of HSP students Alianna Wray, Anya Shukla and Jeffrey Ho, all class of 2026. The full conference schedule can also be found in our bio. From Wray’s work on anti-Black misogyny within U.S. institutions and the law, to Shukla’s presentation, entitled “Engineering Utopia: Startups, Women’s Health, and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence”, to Ho’s research on community reactions to public health crises, which combines his long-standing focus on biology with his interests in history, creative writing, public health and human development, the presentations at this year’s annual Humanities Scholars Program Spring Research Conference will span the disciplines and bring together seniors from across the university to share their research in the humanities. “The Spring Conference is my favorite event of the year in the HSP,” said Verity Platt, professor of classics and HSP director. “It is immensely rewarding to see our scholars’ hard work come to fruition, both in the intellectual depth of each student’s individual project, and in the many confluences of ideas and approaches that emerge through their shared commitment to understanding how diverse stories, practices, and questions have shaped human culture and society.” 📸: HSP seniors Alianna Wray, Anya Shukla and Jeffrey Ho, pictured left to right. Photo courtesy of Kathy Hovis, Communications @cornellcas .

Cornell’s Society for the Humanities Fellow’s Conference - Scale April 24th 2026, 9:30am-5:00pm, A.D. White House We are delighted to host Nick Salvato, Cornell’s Frederic J. Whiton Professor of Liberal Studies, as the keynote speaker for our 2026 Fellow’s Conference! Building off his monograph, Television Scale, Slavato will delve into the complex role of scale in the television industry in his speech, “Scale’s Remainders; or, Television’s Impossible Floor Plans”. Engaging with multiple aspects of the entertainment industry, this lecture explores how “scale is both an irresolvable intellectual problem and an invaluable methodological tool for the field of television studies.” Elaborating on previous arguments, Salvato is now turning his attention to the perplexing floor plans of famous tv set productions, and how some challenges might persist beyond the surface level of scalar use. Join this year's cohort of Fellows at the Society for the Humanities for presentations on work-in-progress on the 2025-26 focal theme of Scale, and experience a wide array of intellectual deep dives into the intricate world of Scale across disciplines. https://events.cornell.edu/event/spring-fellows-conference-on-scale #Cornell #CornellHumanities #Scale #Tv #SetDesign #EntertainmentIndustry #MediaStudies #ProductionDesign #TelevisionScales

What do medieval sculptures, anarchist movements, and TV floor plans have in common? 🔍 Join us for the 2026 Spring Fellows’ Conference: SCALE. Seven interdisciplinary scholars dive into the ways proportionality shapes our world, from Southeast Asian computational environments to queer kinship. 🎤 Keynote: "Television’s Impossible Floor Plans" by Nick Salvato. 🗓 Friday, April 24 ⏰ 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM 📍 Guerlac Room, A.D. White House ☕️ Free, open to the public, with refreshments & reception to follow. Link in bio for the full schedule! 🔗 #Cornell #Humanities #Scale #IthacaEvents #ArtsAndSciences

Semiotic Machines: A Symposium on AI and the Humanities Friday, April 10 10:00am-4:30pm 311 Uris Library https://events.cornell.edu/event/semiotic-machines

Join us for a talk on Humanities & AI - April 16 at 5:15pm in A.D. White House! “Humanities & AI: Modeling Culture Across the Disciplines” by Meredith Martin, Professor of English, Princeton University Computational social scientists have long worked to show the necessity of integrating social scientific expertise into data science workflows. Kate Crawford and dana boyd (2011) Hanna Wallach (2014), and Justin Grimmer (2015), to name a few, have developed research programs that model this interdisciplinary work. Grounded in many aspects of the humanities, cultural analytics and computational humanities research only flourishes in Information Science departments in the U.S. Practitioners in humanities departments struggle to find community in their home institutions, even those with data science programs. In this talk, I urge us to use this moment of AI’s marketing as a ‘cultural technology’ to build mutually reinforcing interdisciplinary collaborations that both address and overcome the history of unequal methodological integration for social sciences and humanities in machine learning research. Meredith Martin is Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton, which started under her leadership in 2014. This event is free & open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture. For more information visit the link in our bio.

Humanities Scholars ➡️ Humanities Advocates Earlier this month a group of four Humanities Scholars Program students, along with two graduate students sponsored by the Society for the Humanities (@cornellhumctr ), travelled to Washington D.C. to participate in the National Humanities’ Alliance Annual Meeting and Advocacy day (@humanitiesall ) Check the link in bio to read the full story. The opportunity allowed students to engage on the future of the Humanities with academics from across the U.S., and brought them into the offices of representatives from New York and their home states to advocate on behalf of funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (@nehgov ), and speak to the importance of continued support for the humanities in education. Photo 1: HSP students, along with graduate students Anna Whittemore, Anthropology, and Sully Howard, Anthropology, and Prof. Durba Ghosh, Taylor Family Director of the Society for the Humanities, in front of the U.S. Capitol Photo 2: HSP students Elly Conrad, Basil Bob, Hannia Arevalo and Hiba Loukssi, all class of 2027, with Thomas Johnson, ‘19, Legislative Assistant to NY-19 Representative Josh Riley (@joshrileyue ) inside the Cannon House Office Building. Special thanks to the representatives’ offices who took the time to meet with our students from Cornell University: @joshrileyue @senschumer @monicaforcongress @repmiketurner @sensusancollins @captmarkkelly

Were you a previous Fellow at Cornell’s Society for the Humanities? Join us September 18–19, 2026 at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Society and gather for a special Fellows Alumni Reunion Weekend at the Andrew Dickson White House. -Welcome reception with current Cornell humanities faculty -Meet current and former Society directors -Fellowship Alumni panel conversations across the decades -Society alumni banquet dinner We are especially excited to welcome Fellows from the 1960s and 1970s who experienced the Society’s earliest years — before the move into the A.D. White House. Reconnect with your cohort. Revisit Ithaca. Celebrate 60 years of bold humanities scholarship. Initial RSVP by May 31, 2026. https://societyhumanities.as.cornell.edu/60th-anniversary-fellows-alumni-reunion Keep in touch with someone from your fellowship year? Tag them or share this post! #CornellHumanities #SHUM60 #CornellAlumni #HumanitiesMatter

Cornell Giving Day IS TODAY! Show your support for Cornell’s Society for the Humanities by making a gift of any size. Every gift adds up to make a huge difference in the lives and experiences of Cornell students, faculty, and our Society fellows! #CornellGivingDay https://givingday.cornell.edu/donate?campaign_id=253160

It's our 60th Anniversary Year! Won't you consider donating (even a small amount) to support the Society on Giving Day--March 12, 2026? For more than five decades, the Society has been a national leader in advancing innovative, interdisciplinary humanities research. Its Fellowships, public humanities initiatives, and annual theme-based programs bring together scholars, students, and community members to explore the ideas that shape our world. Link goes live on 3/12/26 for one day only! https://givingday.cornell.edu/donate?campaign_id=253160 #CornellGivingDay

Tonight, 2/25 at 6pm! Film screening of "The World" at Cornell Cinema with an introduction by Shaoling Ma, Society Faculty Fellow & Associate Professor of Asian Studies. Admission is free! https://cinema.cornell.edu/world @cuasianstudies Cornell Cinema

Welcome back to Cornell, Dr. Chaudhary! 🏛️ We are thrilled to host Cornell PhD alum and Princeton Associate Professor Zahid R. Chaudhary for this year’s Culler Lecture in Critical Theory. 🧠 Drawing from his latest book, Paranoid Publics, Chaudhary will explore the chilling intersection of technology and fascist aesthetics. 📆 3/4/26 ⏰ 5:00pm 📍A.D. White House #Cornell #CornellHumanities #CullerLecture #ADWhiteHouse #Scale #Technofascism #CriticalTheory #VisualCulture #PostcolonialStudies #ParanoidPublics #PlatformCapitalism #AcademicChatter #DigitalPolitics #AIEthics