Fox Center 2024-25 Theme: "Democracy: Past, Present, Future"
How do the Humanities help us examine and understand Democracy?
In a time of intensified political unrest across the globe, the Fox Center's 2024-2025 theme "Democracy: Past, Present, Future" invites both scholars and communities near and abroad to interrogate the shifting contours of democracy and struggles surrounding democratic values and rights in societies past, present, and future.Democracy is measured, on one hand, by the state of political institutions and governance practices: policies, elections, legal apparatus, and judicial mechanisms. At the same time, art, education, and public cultures provide spaces where democratic belonging and freedom are actively and creatively shaped by people through debate, dissent, representation, and dialogue. Humanities research and creative works also play a critical role in analyzing and advancing democratic ideals and institutions.
For the 2024-2025 academic year, the Fox Center invited scholars whose research interests are resonant with such a panoramic view of democracy as shaped and transformed by a variety of forces. We especially welcomed projects investigating the theme across international contexts and/or through interdisciplinary approaches spanning the humanities and humanistic social sciences and employing a range of methodologies and approaches including public and digital humanities.
