VCU’s third annual Humanities Week to explore the theme of repair

Virginia Commonwealth University's Humanities Research Center will host its third annual Humanities Week on Sept. 8-11. This year's program is organized around the theme of repair - exploring what it means to reckon with historical damage, heal communities and reimagine the relationship between universities and the cities they inhabit.

"Repair is one of the most urgent and generative questions facing the humanities today. It asks us to sit with difficult histories - of slavery, displacement, the loss of Indigenous land, environmental harm - and to think carefully about what comes after," said Cristina Stanciu, Ph.D., professor of English and director of the Humanities Research Center.

"What do reparations look like in practice? How do we heal from historical trauma? And what responsibilities do we have toward our communities and our futures? These are not abstract questions," Stanciu said. "They are the questions the city of Richmond is living through right now, and Humanities Week creates a space to engage them rigorously, honestly and together."

Partners for this year's programming include VCU's College of Humanities and Sciences and the School of the Arts, as well as the Shockoe Institute, the Valentine museum and the Library of Virginia.

Among highlights of Humanities Week:

• Tuesday, Sept. 8: The week opens with a lecture - "Making Worlds, Repairing Worlds: What We Do with the Humanities" - by Maria Sachiko Cecire, Ph.D., program officer for higher learning at the Mellon Foundation. Her work at Mellon focuses on supporting humanistic inquiry that engages pressing social and ethical questions.
• Wednesday, Sept. 9: The HRC and VCUarts will co-host a screening of "Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World," a documentary portrait of the celebrated American poet whose work centered on attention, wonder and the natural world. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director and VCU film professor Sasha Waters Freyer.
• Thursday, Sept. 10: The week's keynote public lecture will be delivered by Blair LM Kelley, Ph.D., president and director of the National Humanities Center. Kelley, a historian of African American history and culture, will speak on "Black Freedom: Public Celebration and Commemoration as Practices of Remembrance and Repair."

Humanities Week also includes two events developed in partnership with Richmond's leading cultural and historical institutions.

• Wednesday morning, Sept. 9: A guided tour of the Shockoe Institute - a new educational facility housed in Richmond's historic Main Street Station and dedicated to revealing the enduring impact of racial slavery on American life - will offer participants an immersive engagement with Richmond's pivotal role in the domestic slave trade and the ongoing work of reckoning and repair.
• Friday, Sept. 11: A walking tour with the Valentine museum will bring participants into the streets of the city to encounter its layered histories of repair firsthand.

"The humanities are rarely confined to a classroom or a specific curriculum," said Catherine Ingrassia, Ph.D., dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences. "Rather, they surface in the authors we return to, in the frameworks we use to make sense of the past and in the very lens through which we read a city's streets. The week's focus on 'repair' invites us to encounter that fact deliberately, in the company of our partners across Richmond. The College of Humanities and Sciences is pleased to collaborate with the Humanities Research Center for Humanities Week."

For the full lineup of events and registration details, visit the Humanities Week webpage. All events are free and open to the public, but registration is required.