Envisioning the Humanities for the 21st Century: A 10-Year Anniversary Symposium

Mississippi State’s Institute for the Humanities celebrates its 10th anniversary Oct. 15 and 16 with a special symposium. Part of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, the institute primarily serves the departments of communication, English, classical and modern languages and literatures, history, music, and philosophy and religion, as well as the Cobb Institute of Archaeology. The symposium’s featured speaker will be John Churchill, secretary of Phi Beta Kappa, the world’s oldest honor society for the liberal arts and sciences. “Reasons, Values and Imagination: A Case for Education in the Liberal Arts and Sciences” will be his topic at 3:30 p.m. on the 15th. Participants also will hear from historian Roger Geiger at 9 a.m. on the 16th. An award-winning scholar and researcher on 20th century universities, he will discuss the place of humanities at MSU and other land-grant institutions—one of his major areas of study. Free and open to all, Churchill's presentation takes place in the Bettersworth Auditorium of historic Lee Hall, while Geiger will speak in Salon S of the Bill R. Foster Ballroom in Colvard Student Union. Geiger’s program will be followed in the same location with a 10:30 a.m. panel discussion examining current academic perspectives of the humanities, as well as their prospects for the future.