Last year, we launched a new Working Group Recognition Program to recognize the power and promise of humanities collaborations across institutions. Stay tuned, as we’ll be announcing the inaugural prize-winning groups in the coming weeks!

Below, you’ll find more info for what’s in store this academic year. Please spread the word to your humanities colleagues!

Writing Workshop w/ Helen Sword: How Successful Academics Write

  • Friday, Oct. 30, 2026 - 10am-12pm EDT on Zoom
  • Do you aspire to write more stylishly, prolifically, and with greater ease and enjoyment? In this lively Zoom workshop, international writing expert Helen Sword will introduce the BASE habits of successful academic writers – behavioral, artisanal, social, and emotional – and show how you can develop a customized blueprint for building a more productive and pleasurable writing practice from the ground up. Please bring along a notebook and pen and come prepared for an interactive and inspirational session! More info

Working Group Activities

For this 2026-27 academic year, 62 Working Groups will be holding over 130 activities supported by a record $314,000 in CNY Humanities Corridor funding. Here’s a small sampling of what groups are collaborating on together this year:

  • Environmental & Climate Humanities: lectures on multispecies relations, a climate havens project, environmental imaginaries in art and design, historical work on ecological loss, and the ecological aftermath of contemporary wars.
  • Global & Diaspora Studies: Chinese youth culture and labor, Korean environmental humanities, South Asian studies reimagined through Rust Belt labor networks, and extensive Latin American/Spanish work.
  • Philosophy & Political Thought: regional philosophy conference, Stoicism workshop, close reading of Plato, moral psychology workshop, political theory discussion, civil rights reading group, philosophy of language, and ecosocialism-themed reading series.
  • Documentary & Visual Culture: screenings on gender and queer life in East Asia, videographic-criticism workshop, visiting film historian, conflict-photography study session, and junior-faculty manuscript workshop.
  • Race, Gender, Sexuality & Social Justice: LGBTQ studies, Black feminist thought, reproductive justice, decolonial thought, race and migration, and sustained work on incarceration and reentry.
  • History, Archives, Literature & Memory: visits from early American history scholars, workshop on preserving medieval collections, session on redesigning cultural heritage exhibits, and reading groups in poetry and literature.
  • AI, Archives & the Ethics of Technology: exploration of AI's use with archival collections, museums, and mapping; lecture on AI ethics, and manuscript workshops.
  • Language & Linguistics Pedagogy: strategy series on sustaining regional language programs, language documentation technology, tone research, ASL and multimodal communication.
  • Performance, Music & Embodied Practice: Shakespeare staging techniques, organ festival, decolonial dance residency, jazz studies programming, sound studies conference, theater practice, and keyboard-and-ornithology collaboration.
  • Graduate Student Mentoring: workshops on translating PhD training beyond academia, using AI in job searches, entrepreneurship for humanists, and grad student participation in scholarly panels and manuscript workshops.

Believe it or not, this list is not exhaustive! Collaborations help humanities scholars invigorate their research and teaching through building intellectual communities. Learn more about how to get started with a Working Group and plan for the spring Call for Proposals, or check-in regularly with our event calendar to see what current groups have scheduled (filter by campus).

Next Year’s Writing Retreat in the Adirondacks, October 8-10, 2027

  • The application cycle will be open from Nov. 23, 2026 to Jan. 20, 2027.
  • Humanities faculty at all levels are encouraged to apply (including lecturers, postdocs, and full professors). More info