The CHR aims to promote a version of intellectual collaboration premised on the idea that lively exchange and debate, across disciplinary boundaries, is crucial for knowledge production and that these collective exchanges fertilize and enrich individual research projects.
The Center’s intellectual life is built around the semester-long residential fellowship program during which fellows are released from their teaching. By supporting faculty and doctoral students pursuing their own independent research projects while in regular, intellectual discussion and debate with others working on thematically related projects, the Center positions itself as a site of transdisciplinary collaboration.
We aim to provide a welcoming, intellectual environment for scholarly and social encounters, thereby fostering research partnerships and collaborations with various departments, programs, and colleges at Mason. We also welcome partnerships with the many publicly supported cultural, policy, and educational institutions in the DMV and beyond. We hope to demonstrate that research in the humanities is, by definition, “engaged scholarship” playing a crucial role in addressing society’s most pressing social, civic, political, and ethical challenges, including immigration and nationalism, the ethics of science and technology, and the persistence of inequalities rooted in class, race, gender and ability.
The Mason community is welcome not only to join these discussions, but also to participate in Reading and Working Groups, suggest ideas for programming, and attend all CHR events.