Arts & Culture
A quarter century of new perspectives: The Humanities Institute turns 25
The Humanities Institute has an outsized impact on UC Santa Cruz and the wider world with its strong focus on research excellence, student success, and public engagement.
From bottom left to right: THI Managing Director Irena Polić, THI Faculty Director Pranav Anand, Dean of Humanities Jasmine Alinder. From top left to right: THI Event and Operations Manager Jessica Guild, THI Research Program Manager Laura Martin, THI Research Programs and Communications Director Saskia Nauenberg Dunkell. (Photo by West Cliff Creative)
The Humanities Institute has an outsized impact on UC Santa Cruz and the wider world with its strong focus on research excellence, student success, and public engagement.
Founded in 1999 to provide research support for faculty and graduate students, THI has grown into a vibrant hub for scholarship, cultural programming, and community engagement, anchoring UC Santa Cruz’s humanities division while extending its reach well beyond campus.
Since its founding in 1999, The Humanities Institute (THI) has played a vital role in advancing research, public engagement, and scholarship in the humanities. Over the years, THI has awarded more than 1,300 fellowships, supporting scholars across disciplines in their pursuit of innovative research. Since 2012, the Institute has hosted over 550 public programs, fostering dialogue and connecting academic work with the broader community.
THI has also supported the launch of 208 faculty-led research projects since its inception, further strengthening the university’s intellectual ecosystem.
In addition to these efforts, THI has helped humanities scholars secure over $13.1 million in external funding since 2009, while directly awarding $6.8 million in research fellowships to date.
“THI is a dynamic hub that fosters groundbreaking research and sparks innovative ideas, all while giving back to the local community and engaging with the most pressing issues of our time,” said Managing Director Irena Polić.
Under her leadership, and that of former faculty director Nathaniel Deutsch, Distinguished Professor and Baumgarten Endowed Chair in Jewish StudiesDirector of the Center for Jewish Studies, THI has helped shape projects that blend academic rigor with real-world impact.
Public initiatives include the community-engaged research project Watsonville Is in the Heart spotlighting local Filipino American history and Moving Image Lab fellowships to support PhD students pursuing contemporary professional arts and humanities practices.
THI is perhaps best known for its signature public programming, particularly The Deep Read.
This year, The Deep Read program engaged 11,000 students and community members in Santa Cruz and around the world to explore a major literary work through discussions and events with UC Santa Cruz scholars and the author.
The 2025 Deep Read book, James by Percival Everett, reimagines Huckleberry Finn through the eyes of Jim, and serves as the centerpiece for discussions on race, literacy, and American memory. On May 4, Everett was in conversation with Deep Read Faculty Co-Lead and Professor of Literature Vilashini Cooppan at the Quarry Amphitheater. It was the best-attended Deep Read event in the program’s six-year history. The next day, Everett received the Pulitzer Prize for James.
“The public events do not happen in a vacuum,” said THI faculty director and Professor of Linguistics Pranav Anand. “Every talk, every workshop is grounded in years of rigorous research by humanities scholars.”
Programs like The Deep Read underscore THI’s founding mission to make humanities research visible and relevant. “Many people, particularly in other disciplines, were unclear about what constitutes humanities research,” said Professor Emerita Gail Hershatter, THI’s first faculty director. “We were keen to show that humanities research is contemporary, useful, and in fact indispensable to the university.”
Hershatter and her colleagues launched THI—then known as the Institute for Humanities Research—to fill structural gaps at UC Santa Cruz as it transitioned into a research-focused institution.
That foundation has since expanded to support cross-disciplinary initiatives, global partnerships, and hands-on opportunities for students. Through THI’s Public Fellowships, UC Santa Cruz undergraduates and graduate students have worked with nonprofits and cultural institutions from Santa Cruz to Oslo. “We help scholars take their ideas and turn them into projects that make an impact—not just in the academy, but in the world,” Polić said.
As the institute marks its 25th anniversary, it remains committed to what Humanities Dean Jasmine Alinder calls “creating new perspectives through THI—transforming the way we view society, ourselves, and one another.”
With support from donors including the Helen and Will Webster Foundation and Cultural Champion sponsors Joanna Miller and Linda Peterson, THI continues to serve as a model for how the humanities can illuminate the past, engage the present, and imagine the future.
Learn more about THI’s 25th anniversary at thi.ucsc.edu/25years and come celebrate with The Humanities Institute at the institute’s 25th anniversary culminating event, Night at the Museum on June 5th, 2025. This year the event will feature Amending Worlds, a panel discussion about speculative fiction and a multi-media exhibition by UCSC graduate and undergraduate students and alumni winners of the Coha-Gunderson Prize in Speculative Futures. Night at the Museum welcomes members of the public to experience the ongoing exhibitions and gallery spaces at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History for free.