Grant Summary
$90,251 over 15 months. In summer 2007, the National Humanities Center will assemble a group of liberal arts faculty members from a variety of disciplines for a three-week seminar devoted to understanding and contextualizing some of the challenges to the concept of the human posed by advances in genomics, neuroscience, computer science, nanotechnology, and other scientific and technological fields. Three leading humanities scholars will direct the seminar, and seminar leaders will collaborate with participants to develop ways to teach the texts and concepts discussed. Discussions will continue via electronic media during the 2007 - 2008 academic year, and the group will re-convene in spring 2008 for a two-day seminar in which they will continue discussions, review how their work has made its way into their classrooms, and select material for an electronic resource to help others teaching this material. This project is part of the National Humanities Center's larger initiative, "Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity," which will explore—in various ways—the striking and unprecedented convergence of scientific research and technological innovation on the question of the human.