The Humanities Center at the University of Vermont introduces its first themed year in a series for AY 2024-2025: Justice/Injustice.

We invite scholars to reflect with us on questions that interpret the theme of "justice/injustice" in a capacious and expansive sense, regardless of discipline, field, or craft across the University.

We are experiencing the global rise of hate crimes, increasing fears about and the realities of growing far-right politics at home and abroad, rising costs and inflation, the defunding of education, continued limits of access to healthcare, increasing legal, digital, and physical attacks on trans people, the ongoing and multifaceted impacts of climate crisis, and the ever- present specters of racism, ableism, casteism, classism, sexism. We are also witnessing digital activism, global protest, youth movements, increased interest in mutual aid, pushes for equity and inclusion in our institutions, an attention to wellness, and a proliferation of creative, restorative practices that aim to remedy social and structural ills.

Humanities research has distinctive methods, theoretical frameworks, and nodes of inquiry that push us to seek answers about the ways justice and injustice, as a twinned pair, operate, show up, go unnoticed, and are necessarily linked. We wonder about the interconnectedness of movements that seek to limit or expand human experience. 

In AY 2024-2025, the Humanities Center invites questions, curiosity, and engagement about justice/injustice, and will prioritize funding across all grants and programming that highlights our theme. When applying for any award for this academic year, please indicate if and how your project, event, or research needs fit into justice/injustice, broadly imagined.

If you have any questions, please be in touch with the Humanities Center Director, Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst or Assistant Director Ande Tagliamonte via humanities.center@uvm.edu.