Syracuse Symposium 2025–26 celebrates creativity in a tech-driven world.
How does creativity strengthen communities and individual well-being over a lifetime? The Syracuse University Humanities Center invites the campus and local community to reflect on that question through its 2025–26 Syracuse Symposium, themed "Creativity."
This year’s films debut at the ArtRage Gallery in Syracuse (Feb. 7 through March 21) as part of the Syracuse Symposium series on "Creativity."
Using simple objects such as stones, eggs, paper plates, colored markers and a globe, and employing techniques of light, shadow and motion, a dozen Syracuse area high schoolers are making original short films this summer using their smartphones. “Teens With a Movie Camera” is a four-week, community-based project designed to empower the teens, give voice to their ideas and bring the skills the faculty mentors teach in their college courses to a wider circle of neighbors.
The Engaged Humanities Network hosted its second Community Showcase, highlighting collaborative research, teaching and creative work between Syracuse University and community partners.
The positive impact of community-engaged research was on full display at the Community Folk Art Center (CFAC) on May 2, presenting a wide array of projects. The event showcased the collaborative efforts of faculty, staff and students from over two dozen departments across seven schools and colleges at Syracuse University, along with partners from 30 community-based organizations.
For a decade, the Humanities Center has recognized the wide-ranging scholarly and creative achievements of our academic community.
The Syracuse University Humanities Center (HC) will soon mark a significant milestone in its history. For a decade, it has recognized the wide-ranging scholarly and creative achievements of our academic community. The Center’s 10th annual Books in the Humanities reception honors an impressive 46 works authored or edited by 45 Syracuse University faculty, staff and students published in 2024.
Amanda Brown, former Humanities Center faculty fellow (2019-2020), explores the role of multimodality in second and foreign language teaching, learning, and use in her newly-released book, Multimodality across Epistemologies in Second Language Research (2024), co-edited with Søren Wind Eskildsen.
In this Q&A, Amanda Brown discusses her new book’s origins, key takeaways and the collaborative process behind its development.
The Humanities Center supports four faculty fellows whose research encompasses Dominican fishing communities navigating climate change, literacy programs for formerly incarcerated individuals, Black resistance movements and Indigenous environmental knowledge.
Annual faculty fellowship awards reflect the Center's commitment to leading the way in facilitating humanities scholarship that encourages critical thinking, new perspectives and interdisciplinary connections. “Each spring, we are so delighted to support a cohort of Faculty Fellows engaged in cutting-edge scholarship,” says Vivian M. May, director of the Humanities Center and CNY Humanities Corridor, and professor of women’s and gender studies.
Azra Hromadžić, former Humanities Center faculty fellow (2020-2021), offers a multi-layered exploration of what she describes as a “riverine citizenship,” drawing on history, politics, memories and love in Riverine Citizenship: A Bosnian City in Love with the River.
In sixth grade, Azra Hromadžić started “writing” a book, though she might have not realized it at the time.
The memories young Hromadžić formed while growing up near the Una — a river winding through Bihać, a town in northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina — became the foundation of her 2024 release, Riverine Citizenship: A Bosnian City in Love with the River.
This work is a “love letter,” a “grief letter” and a form of activism, all in one. Weaving together complex emotions and theoretical frameworks surrounding the Una, Hromadžić’s book constructs a concept she calls a “riverine citizenship.”
The Humanities Center and Engaged Humanities Network provide vital infrastructure for community-engaged work across different academic trajectories.
The Humanities Center, with support from the Office of Research and the College of Arts and Sciences, recently established the Engaged Humanities Postdoctoral Fellows program as part of a biennial initiative in collaboration with EHN. This prestigious, highly competitive program appoints researchers with doctoral degrees to two-year faculty-level positions in residence at the Humanities Center.
(Photo: Alicia Hoppes) New York State Poet Laureate Patricia Spears Jones
Patricia Spears Jones visited the Shinder Theater at the YMCA in downtown Syracuse as part of the Syracuse Symposium series, to read poems from her newest collection, “The Beloved Community.”
Thursday evening, April 3rd, Patricia Spears Jones visited the Shinder Theater at the YMCA in downtown Syracuse as part of the Syracuse Symposium series. Spears Jones, the current New York State Poet Laureate, read poems from her newest collection, “The Beloved Community.” Released in 2023, the collection aims to capture the “volatility of the world."
Joan Bryant, former Humanities faculty fellow (2016-2017), releases a new book that explores interpretations of race from the past titled Reluctant Race Men: Black Challenges to the Practice of Race in Nineteenth-Century America.
Bryant's distinguished work does not stop at her new book. She has since returned to her Humanities Center fellowship research: a social history project that pieces together what freedom meant for those living in the part of Southern New Jersey that overlooked Delaware while it was still a slave state — a place she calls “the edge of freedom.”