Joy Connolly Lecture "Parable of the Scholar: The Humanities in Conditions of Abundance"

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We humanists are hoping for, and many of us are fighting for, a new day in the United States when the production and circulation of knowledge are understood as keystones of democracy and of human thriving - and thus as deserving of substantial public investment. Having worked so long in the spirit of doing a lot with a little, how do we envision the humanities in conditions of abundance? What shifts in traditional academic culture and policy will help us meet those conditions? In the spirit of Octavia Butler’s future-oriented thinking, this talk draws together many threads of contemporary thinking to sketch a future where American universities center the values and practices of liberal arts-grounded humanistic inquiry.

Joy Connolly has served as President of the American Council of Learned Societies since 2019. Previously, she was Provost and Interim President of The Graduate Center at the City University of New York and Dean for the Humanities at New York University. She has also held faculty appointments at Stanford University and the University of Washington. A scholar of classics, Connolly is committed to strengthening the production and circulation of humanistic knowledge. She has secured philanthropic support for scholarship and initiatives focused on doctoral education reform, open access publishing, and diversifying the academy. She is the author of two books and more than eighty articles, reviews, and essays, and is currently writing All the World’s Pasts, which explores the ancient world from a global perspective. Connolly holds a BA in Classics from Princeton University and a PhD in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She serves on several humanities boards and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.

This event is free and open to the public .