Stanford Humanities Center
Hope: The Future of an Idea
In a troubled age, hope may seem an elusive feeling. Alongside its history as a virtue, a political concept, and a psychological state, it enjoys a vivid presence as a necessary but poorly understood experience in everyday life. To reframe it in the context of this Colloquy, we might ask: how has hope been defined and critiqued? Where does it lie latent or unacknowledged? And how does the work of the humanities depend on hope, and perhaps arouse it?
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Hope is deeply utopian, not in the colloquial or naïve sense of idealism, nor as mere "wishful thinking." Hope is a political and imaginative praxis. It is rooted in the capacity and willingness to envision a radically different "there and then," and to work toward it, even when the "here and now"...
Tirop reflects on the inspiration behind her dissertation project, and shares how the history of Kenyan running can offer alternative ways to imagine and narrate ambition, greatness, and success in more humane ways.
Oberiano finds hope for the future of the climate of the planet in indigenous CHamoru theater and legends.
Through a careful reading of a mid-20th-century button imposed on cross-dressers in Hawaii in light of recent U.S. policies regarding gender, Meyer finds hope in reversing discourse.
On a visit with her mother to Santa Cruz, Murphy finds solace and hope for the future while observing migrating monarch butterflies.
Morale finds East Slavic representations of hope in three disparate (chronologically) examples: high medieval chronicles, Dostoevskii's novels of the 19th century, and Tarkovskii's 20th-century films.
Levy explores the ways that unintended and unexpected derailments can produce humor and hope in Meiji era literature.
Ali Madani discusses the power of narrative to shape and reshape experience, to offer consolation, and to supply some hope at scale.
Gandhi reflects on “Southern constellations,” her method for bringing together three southern spaces—South Korea, South Vietnam, and the US South—and examining how the “South” operates as a political concept vis-à-vis an imagined “North.”
Contreras considers the short story "La máquina de la felicidad" by the Venezuelan writer Jesús Enrique Lossada, discussing its tale of mankind’s liberation through an apparatus.
Johnston traces Spes (Hope), both goddess and idea, from ancient Rome to late-antique Christianity.
Greenfield reflects on hope as manifested by her young daughter.
Sockness presents two playlists around the theme of hope, bringing together both religious and secular music.
Pitkin counters the elusiveness of hope in Christian thought by grounding it in the present, through the lens of a poem by Denise Levertov.
Members of the '23-'24 cohort of Fellows discuss how their research informs and is informed by the concept of hope.
Menon discusses the public art that proliferated at Stanford and in Palo Alto in response to the "Black Spring" of 2020.
Brust reflects on the value of higher education in the U.S. What one can hope to achieve from this institution that is currently in crisis?
Two Stanford Humanities Center Fellows for 2023–24, Marroquín and Zuo, discuss the concept of hope.
Contreras asks what happens when we wait for some end to materialize.
Errazzouki reflects on her personal identity as the Muslim granddaughter of a Jewish grandfather.
Reflecting on the 2024 Spring Celebration event held at the Stanford Humanities Center, Phillips asks “what sort of thing do we mean when we talk about hope”?
Oeler draws links between cinema and hope by asking "What can students of film hope for? And how are they to cultivate that hope?"
Reflecting on Ever Given, the cargo ship stuck for six days in the Suez Canal in 2021, Young discusses the call to open a single cargo container as an Afrofuturist manifestation that moves beyond the logics of individual capitalism.
Kontos reflects on how humanities disciplines can help teach and cultivate hope. “Are the humanities a necessary and positive component of our lives as a source of hope," Kontos asks.
Pentcheva contemplates on hope as it emerges in the visual imagery of the eleventh-century Byzantine monastery of Hosios Loukas.
Getachew reflects on two forms of hope: a deference to fate and fortune on the one hand, and an active prefiguration or performance of hope on the other.
Bashkin tells the story of Amal/Tivka, a twentieth-century Iraqi Jewish woman.
Wager reimagines hope as emergent in postconflict Colombian literature, art, government reports, and cinema.
