ASU Humanities Institute

Happy Pride Month! 🌈 At the Humanities Institute, we are proud to be a hub where q***r and trans scholarship can thrive all year long. Through our Q***r X Humanities initiative, faculty and students gain the opportunity engage in interdisciplinary collaboration and critical dialogue about LGBTQIA2S+ culture, history and politics.

Interested in getting involved? Connect with us at humanitiesinstitute.asu.edu/q***r-x-humanities

For Pride Month, we’re revisiting a few books by writers from the Piper and ASU creative writing community:

The Porcupine of Truth by Bill Konigsberg
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
To Name the Bigger Lie by Sarah Viren

Three very different books - a YA novel, a poetry collection, and a memoir-in-essays - each attentive to questions of identity, intimacy, language, and the stories we inherit.

Have you read any of these yet? Drop your favorite LGBTQ+ reads in the comments so we can keep building our summer TBR list.

https://piper.asu.edu/

Get all your burning questions answered about the Golden Age of Piracy 🏴‍☠️ in a Reddit AMA featuring ASU's own Manushag Powell, a professor of English and pirate literature expert!

Join the fun on June 6 or submit your question in advance: https://ow.ly/s6Wy50Z3rAH

Edit: Carla LynDale Bishop, Yasmin Saikia and Chad Haines are recognized for their work on "Mapping Blackness."

Congratulations to the 17 amazing faculty members who make up our cohort of spring seed grant recipients! Learn more about their projects at https://news.asu.edu/b/20260519-asu-humanities-institute-announces-spring-2026-seed-grant-recipients

We can't believe the semester is over! Shout-out to the incredible fellows who completed their fellowship year with us: Evan Berry, Peter Joseph Torres, Linh Vu, Jed Samer, Mónica Espaillat Lizardo and Rachel Corbman! 👏

We're thrilled to share Dan Gilfillan is joining the Humanities Institute as the 2026-27 Research Development Fellow! A Humanities Institute seed grant recipient with over a decade of institutional history, Dan will assist with programming development, national alliance-building and grant initiatives. Learn more: https://news.asu.edu/b/20260508-asu-humanities-institute-announces-research-development-fellow

It's Denim Day! 🩵 We're wearing denim to protest the myths about sexual violence. Follow ASU Sexual & Relationship Violence Prevention Program for resources and more information.

We're ramping up for this year's Desert Nights, Rising Stars. Oct. 16-17, 2026. Keynote: Stephen Graham Jones. Now until May 15, you can apply to be a presenter:

https://piper.asu.edu/hostaconferencesession

You can also check out the full list of featured faculty so far here:

https://piper.asu.edu/conference/faculty

Pushing the envelope. Risk. Vulnerability.

Registration opens June 1. ❤️