Humanities and Human Origins
Humanities scholars have always investigated what it means to be human.
Even in the wake of new scientific knowledge about the role of genetics/genomics, DNA, and the topography of the brain in making us human, humanistic inquiry into consciousness, curiosity, character, culture, creativity, love, language, spirituality, and the imagination —as well as into the human propensity for destruction, cruelty, and loyalty to tyrants (among other disheartening human characteristics)—remains crucial to a full understanding of “the human.”
This initiative engages scholars in addressing and analyzing the role of humanities fields and disciplines in producing knowledge about human origins. Because origins combine ideas about cause, justification, boundaries, and chronology and link the factual with the ethical and the empirical with the theoretical, origins inquiries require an interdisciplinary approach that draws on history, philosophy, language study, and religion as well as on the natural sciences.
IHR Fellows program
The 2010-2011 IHR Fellows theme was "The Humanities and Human Origins."
The Origins of Leprosy as a Physical Disease and Social Condition in Medieval Western Europe
Principal Investigator(s): Monica H. Green, School of Historical, Religious and Philosophical Studies and Rachel E. Scott, School of Human Evolution and Social Change
The Human Alien: The Future of the Environmental Humanities
Principal Investigator(s): Joni Adamson, Associate Professor, School of Letters and Sciences, Affiliate, School of Sustainability
Semiotics of Race: Race and Genomics
Principal Investigator(s): Lisa Anderson, Associate Professor, Women and Gender Studies and Theatre, School of Social Transformation
Africa, Christianity and Anthropology: The Debate over Africa’s Role in Human Origins
Principal Investigator(s): Andrew Barnes, Associate Professor, School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
Bridging the New Moral Psychology to Traditional Ethics, Principle Investigator(s): Angel Pinillos, Assistant Professor, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies
How Can the Humanities Inform the Comparative Biology of Human Nature?, Principle Investigator(s): Jason Scott Robert, Associate Professor, Center for Biology and Society and School of Life Sciences
Visting Fellows:
A Brief History of Evil--What we learn from the great villains of literature, Principle Investigator(s): Lucy Hawking, ASU Origins Project
ihr Seed Grants
The Lucy's Legacy Project-- Institute of Human Orgins and Donald C. Johanson Collection: Linking Public Humanities with a Public Understanding of Science, Project Director(s): William Kimbel, Director, Institute of Human Origins, and Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and the Environment, School of Human Evolution and Social Change; Nancy Dallett, Academic Professional, Public Historian, School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies