The Modern Language Association awards $3,000 grants every year to support the development of courses and other educational programs that build enrollments and revitalize student interest in the humanities. In particular, we encourage proposals for courses that are interdisciplinary, that include the digital humanities, and that emphasize collaboration, public engagement, and experiential learning.
Desert Humanities Online Reader
Humanities faculty select texts they think are important for understanding desert humanities and write a brief introduction to the text. For those who wish, they can also do a short video. These serve as teaching resources for the ASU community so that others can find engaging desert humanities material and have the guidance of our faculty in understanding the texts.
Deserts are demanding and pose large questions to us—questions that invite large ecological solutions. A domain of extremes, the desert challenges its inhabitants to imagine what a good life consists of; how to practice a sustainable and equitable mode of living that life, paying careful attention to the long history of human cultures attempting just that; and the relation of art and story to the creation of both.
Here is the background vision and thinking that has made Desert Humanities possible. This is part of a document written by environmental faculty at ASU who proposed this initiative in the Fall of 2018.