Wolfe Annual Theme
Yearly themes provide cohesion to our programming and reinforce the Wolfe Institute's promotion of school- and campus-wide conversations grounded in the humanities. Establishing a broad theme each year creates a focus for collaborative events that span a variety of fields. Creating and cosponsoring programs around a relevant topic encourages curricular and extracurricular engagement.
The 2021–22 Theme for the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities is (re)discovery.
What do you look forward to discovering in 2021-22? What do you look forward to rediscovering?
The concept of (re)discovery acknowledges how transformative the experience of the pandemic has been, while simultaneously representing the hope we have for moving through the challenges of the coming year.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a reshaping of individual and community priorities as well as recognition of what our values are versus what they can be. We have learned new ways to interact and to take and teach classes—and we have committed to new ways of looking at problems and finding solutions.
Isolation has brought a renewed focus on what our priorities are for ourselves and our communities. Many of us have rediscovered our connections to our families, our work, and our morals. This sharpened focus opens the space to ask: What do we want to learn or learn anew? And what are we seeing for the first time, or in a bright new light?
The verb discover has wrongly been used to describe the settler colonial project that continues to devastate the Indigenous peoples and lands of the Americas—including the Canarsee and Nyack Lenape peoples who originally stewarded the land on which Brooklyn College lives. We reject discovery as a historical narrative, even as we embrace discovery as part of the learning process. In fact, in the coming year many at Brooklyn College look forward to the challenging process of seeing curricula, classes, academic fields, and intellectual research with new perspectives which can result in more accurate as well as less biased teaching, research, and policies.
The parentheses of (re)discovery acknowledges our different experiences. For instance, the emergence of Black Lives Matter and Me Too as both hashtags and movements reveals that what some communities have known deeply for generations others have only recently become aware of.
We are rediscovering people and activities through loss; the parentheses around (re) also serve as a way to hold space and acknowledge how transformative recent experiences have been. (re)discovery is a process that is honest about what we have experienced, and hopeful about where we are headed.
The 2021 Wolfe Theme Selection Committee chose (re)discovery from a record number of submissions from throughout the Brooklyn College community. "Rediscovery" was suggested by a current student, and the parentheses were suggested by an alumna.
2021 Wolfe Theme Selection Committee members: Allan Amanik, Tania Darbouze, Alexandria James, Lauren Mancia, Emily Tumpson Molina, Ngoc Cindy Pham, Malka Simon
Past Themes
2020–21: Transforming
The 2020–21 Wolfe theme is "transforming." Transforming acknowledges the evolving world around us, as well as a hope and possibility for our collective future, and each person's agency in contributing to that future. It recognizes the ways Brooklyn College faculty are transforming their individual disciplines through research, scholarship, and art, and how our students are transforming our communities with their work, ideas, and activism. Transforming also emphasizes the college's mission statement—to provide transformative education and help students transform their fields and professions.
2019–20: Land
This theme was suggested by students and approved by a faculty committee. It engages the idea of land broadly, including nations, indigenous studies, the earth and other planets, maps and mapping, digital territories, landscapes, soil, and the verb to land, as in to arrive at a conclusion as well as other manifestations.
2018–19: The Body
For the inaugural 2018–19 year, the theme for Wolfe Institute events is "The Body," a concept that encompasses the physical body and brain as well as the body politic, the student body, and bodies of literature, congress, or even water.
