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

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