This summer, Georgetown faculty and more than 100 higher education leaders in the humanities from across the country convened on the Hilltop for the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) 2023 Summer Seminar.
The gathering, Centering the Humanities, focused on the intersection of the humanities with social and cultural discourse on both college campuses and the wider world.
Ricardo Ortiz, former president of the Association of Departments of English (ADE) and current director of the Master of Arts in Engaged and Public Humanities program in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, organized the event with the MLA. The university’s distinctive profile within the humanities and its innovative approaches to teaching and research made it the ideal location for the MLA’s Summer Seminar, Ortiz said.
The three-and-a-half-day seminar, which Georgetown graduate students in the humanities also attended, helped demonstrate how centering the humanities matters for both students and faculty at-large.
“It gave us a chance to showcase the best of Georgetown: from the promise of our Humanities Initiative and new M.A. in Engaged and Public Humanities program, to the more established accomplishments of our Faculty of Languages and Linguistics and our Department of English, to the innovations in teaching generated out of CNDLS and the Red House,” Ortiz said.