The Future Knowledge seminar series will provide the UNCW community with an opportunity to explore the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of humanistic inquiry. Emerging technologies, computational methods and vast amounts of data are partially responsible for transforming the way researchers and students understand their work and disciplines. This is especially true in the humanities, social sciences, and arts where the impacts of these advances are still unfolding. This series will bring leading scholars into conversation with our university community to help us better understand how these developments are contributing to a growth in interdisciplinarity and reshaping humanistic inquiry in the twenty-first century. The Future Knowledge seminar series is supported by an Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series (IRSS) grant from the UNCW Research Development Office.
Jessica Otis (George Mason University) delivered a public lecture entitled “Intersections: History, Mathematics, and Digital Humanities” based on her NSF-funded project, Death by Numbers, and her recent book, By the Numbers: Numeracy, Religion, and the Quantitative Transformation of Early Modern England (Oxford 2024). The talk focused on the ways people adopt and adapt to new information technologies, as well as how those technologies can transform previous understandings of both the natural world and human history. Otis also led a workshop on network analysis for faculty and students.
Jonathan Kramnick (Yale) delivered a public lecture entitled "What is close reading?" based on his recent book, Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies (Chicago 2023). Long recognized as the distinctive technique of literary studies, close reading is the critic’s way of pursuing arguments and advancing knowledge. Kramnick’s scholarship changes how we think about the basic tools of literary analysis and makes a powerful case for the necessity of both literature and criticism within a multidisciplinary university. Kramnick also led a workshop on his recent work for faculty and students.