Since its founding in the 2001, the Center for the Humanities has organized an array of seminars, symposia, and other events to highlight some of the most influential, innovative, or emerging fields of scholarship within the humanities. Each year the Center has focused on an annual theme and invited world-renowned scholars who inform our discussions. As the Center's programming continues to evolve, we hope to augment the variety of opportunities avialable to facutly, students, and the Grinnell College community more broadly, as we continue in our mission to foreground exciting work taking place within the many disciplines and fields that comprise the humanities.

Past Symposia

2011-12 Humanities Now
Spring 2010 Place and Memory April 21 – 23, 2010
Spring 2009 Visual Culture and Social Engagement April 22 - 24, 2009
Spring 2008 Thinking Interdisciplinarity April 9 - 11, 2008
Spring 2007 Pleasure April 11 - 13, 2007
Spring 2006 The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism in the West April 5 - 7, 2006Religion and Violence February 15 - 17, 2006
Fall 2005 Intolerance November 9 - 11, 2005
Spring 2005 Currents in Contemporary Feminist Scholarship April 13 - 15, 2005
Spring 2004 Globalization and Cultural Capital April 7 - 9, 2004
Spring 2003 Montage and Modern Art April 16 - 19, 2003

Faculty Seminars

In years in which the Center hosts Distinguished Visiting Professors, we offer a faculty seminar taught by our guest scholars in the area of their expertise. This seminar is open to all Grinnell College faculty with an interest in the topic. Click on the links below for information about past seminars.

Fall 2007 Thinking Interdisciplinarity 
Fall 2006 Pleasure 
2005 - 2006 Diversity as Practice: Strategies and Difficulties in the Implementation of MulticulturalismReligion and ViolenceThe New Anti-Semitism and the Old 
Fall 2004  Feminist Scholarship Today 
Fall 2003  Post-Postmodern: Globalization, Symbolic Capital, and Resistance 
Fall 2002  Semiotic Approaches to the Total Work of Art 
Fall 2001  Modernity and the Problem of Evil