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Over the years, FHI has selected yearlong thematic foci to organize interdisciplinary programming at the Institute. Current and past themes include World Arts, Water, and the Monument.
For the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 academic years, the Franklin Humanities Institute selected the theme of World Arts.
The World Arts series explores the world-making potential of the arts and the ways in which worlds are imagined within them. Events and working groups will examine the way in which the arts and humanities have been conceptualized with an expanded world view, whether in terms of universalisms and planetarities; by trade and trade routes, such as the spice trade, silk routes, and the slave trade; and by worldview, whether religious, ideological, or territorial. Seeking to provide a platform for a broad historical and geographical investigation, we will also explore how older and newer empires are sustained by the imaginative work of the political, of the spiritual and of astronomy as well as land, space, finance, and secular and religious worldviews. We will also explore current conceptualizations of world arts, in categories such as: world literature, the global novel, international style, world music and dance, art and architecture biennials, and music, dance, and film festivals.
Program Archive:
- 20-22 The Ongoing Biennial: video playlist of a conversation series with curators and other art professionals, organized by Pedro Lasch of the Social Practice Lab in conjunction with World Arts
- Antigone Worldings colloquium and film series: with videos and resources for further study
- Full list of World Arts events via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (expect slow loading speed)
- FHI Annual Reports from 2019-20 and 2021-22, with detailed series summaries.
With multiple events over the 2018-2019 academic year, this thematic series covered many aspects of humanistic and artistic responses to water, from oceanic voyages to lives built around rivers, from aquatic aesthetics to refugee migration, from water shortage to floods, and from water conceived through sacred forms to aquatic lifeworlds and ontologies.
Program Archive:
- Water series video playlist
- Full list of Water series events via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (expect slow loading speed)
Sponsored by the Office of the Provost, and in conjunction with other events on campus, the Franklin Humanities Institute’s Monument series examined the concept of “monument” and monumentality; the relation of the monument (and counter-monument) to the nation-state; controversies over disgraced monuments; architectural theory and monumental aesthetics; and the shifting meanings of the histories embodied in monuments in an age of the digital.
Program Archive:
- What is a Monument? FHI Director Ranjana Khanna on series theme
- Full list of Monument series events via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (expect slow loading speed)