The African Humanities Project Workshop

A Collaboration between Columbia University, Center for African Studies CAS/ UM6P, and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

December 16 – 17, 2024

UM6P Campus – Benguerir

The African Humanities Project Workshop is a collaboration among three universities—Columbia University, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, and Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University—aims to reinterpret the humanities from an African perspective and will be held on December 16 – 17, 2024. This initiative strives not to replicate the Eurocentrism linked with colonial endeavors but to explore African humanities as a means to transcend the “narrow” humanism critiqued by Lévi-Strauss in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, aspiring instead toward a globally encompassing humanism, a “humanism that embraces the world” (“L’humanisme à la mesure du monde”) as articulated by Aimé Césaire.

What is commonly referred to as the “humanities” in academia cannot be dissociated from what is meant by “humanism.”  In an effort to interrogate both humanism and humanities, we take an historical view.  In Europe, from the 15th to the 18th century, the humanities referred to the study of grammar, rhetoric, history and philosophy. From the 18th century onwards, they were used to describe the human sciences, including sociology, psychology and anthropology. “Humanity,” in the singular, refers to the blossoming of the human being, to fortitude and the ability to judge. From “humanities” in the plural to “humanity” in the singular, we shift from a literary and scholarly sense to a moral and axiological one.