Wolf Humanities Center

At the inaugural ceremony of the Penn Humanities Forum in February 1999, William Ferris, then Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, called the humanities “the intellectual air we breathe, the cultural sea we swim in. It is where humankind’s best insights into our values, traditions, and ideals can be found.”

The Penn Humanities Forum is charged with taking a fresh look at those insights that bear on the human experience. Our goals are to demonstrate how vital the humanities are to the life of the mind and the health of society, and how the humanities are connected with many areas of inquiry in medicine, law, business, and the sciences.

Annual topic-based programs and broader initiatives such as our Digital Humanities Forum and "Humanities at Large" collaborations invite people both on campus and off to join us in considering our common stake in the "thinking arts."