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Theme 1: Critical Cultural Studies

Exploring ways to broaden the scope of the humanities and creating a wider critical canvas through cultural studies. Examining critical perspectives on academic disciplines; how traditional disciplines remain constant or must respond to changes in humans’ relationships to each other, to society, technology, and the environment.  Considering ways of knowing, shifts in conceptual frameworks and research methodologies.  Proposing new directions for humanities studies.  Articles publish into The International Journal of Critical Cultural Studies.

  • Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary humanities
  • The relationship of humanities to other knowledge domains (technology, science, economics)
  • Making knowledge: research in the humanities
  • Subjectivity and objectivity, truth and relativity
  • Philosophy, consciousness and the meanings of meaning
  • Geographical and archeological perspectives on human place and movement
  • The study of humans and humanity, past and present
  • The future of humanities

Sample Keywords: Cultural Studies, Critical Discourse, Theoretical Frameworks, Paradigms, Research Methods, Disciplines, Epistemology, Future Directions, Interdisciplinarity

Theme 2: Communications and Linguistics Studies

Examining the forms and effects of human representation and communication. Articles publish into The International Journal of Communication and Linguistic Studies.

  • Human representations and expression through art, media, technology, design
  • Communications in human interactions
  • Linguistic and cultural diversity: its nature and meanings
  • Language dynamics: global English, multilingualism, language death, language revival
  • New media, new messages, new meanings in the “information society”

Sample Keywords: Communication, Language, Linguistics, Representation, The Arts, Design, Media, Technology, Social Meaning, Social Interactions

Theme 3: Literary Humanities

Analyses of literatures and literary practices, to stabilize bodies of work in traditions and genres, or to unsettle received expressive forms and cultural contents. Examining changes over time in conceptual frameworks, ways of knowing, and ways of seeing.   Articles publish into The International Journal of Literary Humanities.

  • Critique in literary analysis; the role of the critic; perspectives on criticism
  • Conceptual frameworks (modern, postmodern, neo-liberal, colonialism, post-colonialism, etc)
  • Literatures: national, global and diasporic
  • Literary forms (fiction, the novel, poetry, theater, non-fiction) and genres
  • Literary forms of media: photography, film, video, internet
  • Identity and difference in literature

Sample Keywords: Literature, The Literary, Literary Criticism, Forms and Genres, Media, Conceptual Frameworks, Identity and Difference

Theme 4: Civic, Political, and Community Studies

Social studies in the humanities, where the humanities meet the ‘social sciences’.  Affinities and affiliations and their impacts on relationships within and across cultures.   Issues of policy, governance, and controls over populations within and across nations.  The human condition in an era of globalization.  Articles publish into The International Journal of Civic, Political, and Community Studies.

  • Human formations: families, institutions, organizations, states and societies
  • Human expressions: values, attitudes, dispositions, sensibilities
  • Human differences: gender, sexuality, families, race, ethnicity, class, (dis)ability
  • Affinities: citizenship and other forms of belonging
  • Globalization and its discontents
  • Diversity: dialogue as a local and global imperative
  • The dynamics of identity in culture
  • Immigration, refugees, minorities and diaspora
  • Internationalism, globalism, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism
  • Human rights
  • Human violence and peace
  • Governance and politics in society

Sample Keywords: Affinities & Affiliations, Identities, Diversity, Citizenship, Globalization, Immigration, Minorities, Assimilation, Nationalism, Human Rights, Governmentality, Bio-politics

Theme 5: Humanities Education

On theories and practices of teaching and learning in the disciplines of the humanities and humanistic social sciences. General and subject-specific pedagogy. Articles publish into The International Journal of Humanities Education.

  • General and subject-specific pedagogy
  • Language acquisition and language instruction
  • Learning new languages (including second language instruction, multilingual)
  • Professional development and teacher education
  • Influence of learner characteristics on the educational process
  • Education for a new humanity

Sample Keywords: Pedagogy, Subject-specific pedagogy, Language Learning, Humanistic Social Sciences, Learners, Teacher Education and Training

Presentations at the conference, as well as the journals and books created in this knowledge community, are grouped around the themes listed here. Submissions are welcomed that cross more than one thematic area. Keywords are only indicative - please add your own keywords as you think necessary. The range of ideas listed in each thematic grouping and associated keywords is continually reviewed and revised by the participants in this knowledge community. Please suggest additions and changes.