The Georgetown Humanities Initiative Achieves a New Threshold

Friday, October 25, was a proud day for the Georgetown humanities community. Director Professor Nicoletta Pireddu and Arts & Sciences Dean Andrew Sobanet led the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the new location of the Georgetown Humanities Initiative. It is beautiful, classical, space in one of the iconic academic buildings at Georgetown. One floor below, on a portico and steps, twenty-two US presidents, including the first, George Washington, have given speeches. Large, historic, oil paintings grace the walls. The scene evokes a contemplative, scholarly, feel.

In a real sense this was a gift to the humanities community from the Capitol Campus, as space was formerly occupied by the McCourt School of Public Policy. The move out of that school was the first step of re-imaging the buildings surrounding the Dahlgren Chapel courtyard.

It’s easy to imagine the small rooms toward the director’s suite as soon containing colleagues helping one another on draft manuscripts, thinking through puzzles of next steps in a scholarly journey. One can envision undergraduate and graduate students meeting to discuss their own creative projects, each in their own way trying to learn how to live the life of the mind so central to the humanistic tradition. The rooms will also become temporary homes for visits of scholars from throughout the globe, the places where they stimulate new thoughts, new perspectives for the Georgetown community. Finally, they will be meeting places for Georgetown scholars from different fields who are seeking to understand perspectives held by different disciplines.

For many decades, Georgetown has suffered from too little space for humanities scholars to interact. Deans and provosts for some years have imagined a gathering space devoted to the humanities. Lack of space to engage across units is almost always a death knell to multi-disciplinary efforts. The default of staying in one’s department or programs is a strong force.

So, for years, those colleagues who sought interaction across units met in conference rooms for short moments and then returned to their offices away from one another. Finally, now, it’s conceivable that potential partners can “hang out” at the Humanities Initiative space. They can experience the by-chance creative instances spurred by thinking about their problem from a different perspective, and thereby advance their agenda more effectively.

The Humanities Initiative will achieve its gools through seed grants and student fellow positions, giving life to the space. The current set of student fellow were introduced to the crowd at the ribbon-cutting and reminded us why we do our work at Georgetown.

The space in the Humanities Initiative on the second floor of Old North is just a beginning of the renaissance of the humanities at Georgetown. Over the coming months and years the surrounding buildings of Healy, McGuire, Old North, and New North will become the Georgetown Humanities Quad. This will be a home for humanistic scholarship, one of the important roots of the university, occupying the very origins of the spaces built to nurture the small school of 1789 into the global research university of the 21st century.

So the ribbon cutting was a wonderful first step on a journey that will continue for some years. Onward!