Initiatives

Comparative Race, Society and Transformation Group
The Comparative Race, Society and Transformation Group is a Priority Area Research group funded by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research at Tufts. Building on the ongoing work of the Center for the Humanities at Tufts, and the newly-established Department of Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora, the CRST’s work encompasses both academic interdisciplinary research projects such as the Comparative Global Humanities initiative, as well as outwardly-focused conversations, such as the Boston African American Freedom Trail project.

Faculty Reading Groups
The Humanities Reading Group, involving faculty from across the arts and humanities departments, meets several times a semester to discuss readings on the role of the humanities in public life.

The Educationist Reading Group welcomes faculty from across the arts and humanities departments. We meet two to three times a semester to discuss philosophies of teaching and learning as crucial to scholarly practice and humanist inquiry. We are interested in these writings within their historical and intellectual frameworks as well as how they shape our approaches in the classroom. 

Half the History Research and Action Project
Professors Jennifer Burton and Julie Dobrow are creating a digital archive to document women’s stories. The Center for the Humanities will serve as an incubator for this project during AY 2022-2023.

The Mellon Sawyer Seminar in Comparative Global Humanities
The Mellon Sawyer Seminar in Comparative Global Humanities was supported by a Tufts Collaborates seed grant in 2015-2016, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar in 2016-2017.