About Humanities
The Faculty of Humanities is a diverse, engaged community of people. We are home to 160 regular faculty members, 19 continuing sessional faculty and 31 support employees. Our student community includes 178 graduate students and more than 1300 undergraduate students.
The Faculty of Humanities asks complex questions about what it means to be human, what our relationships with each other and our environments require of us and what responsibilities we hold to the world and its future.
We study products of human thought and creativity: languages, literatures, media, material cultures, histories and beliefs across peoples, places and times. We uphold justice and diversity. We promote global knowledges and cultivate intercultural acumen. We confront how humanity engages with natural and constructed environments, both real and imagined.
Our members consistently win university, national, and international awards for their outstanding research and teaching. We are innovators in Digital Humanities, with the Humanities Computing and Media Centre and the forging cutting-edge work on the national and international stages. Through the Critical Humanities Commons, we foster interdisciplinary scholarship and public dialogue on some of the most pressing issues facing our world.
Our goals
- enrich human dignity by addressing what it means (and has meant) to be human, as well as humanity’s relationship to the non-human
- provoke critical inquiry by exploring the meanings and methods of reason and critique, including how they vary across time and culture and how they impact our understandings of the world and its survival
- engage myriad voices by valuing multilingualism as well as differences of language, culture and ways of being in a transnational world
- inspire innovative expression by addressing the breadth of human expression, including the full plurality of media
Our values
- collaborating in the spirit of innovation, collegiality, respect and trust
- working towards decolonization and Indigenous, environmental, social, racial, gender and disability justice
- fostering an ethic of social engagement, intellectual curiosity, incisive critique and moral courage
- differentiating between what is right and what is easy, and challenging things we take for granted
Indigenization & decolonization
We are committed to implementing the principles of decolonization and Indigenization in our programs and organizational structures.
A five-year Indigenization Implementation Strategy (IIS) has been developed to guide our collective and individual efforts to support and implement the principles of the UVic Indigenous Plan, UVic Strategic Plan, and applicable at the faculty and unit level.
This initiative was led by Lisa Surridge, Associate Dean Academic, and Lydia Toorenburgh, Indigenous Resurgence Coordinator for the Faculties of Humanities, Science and Social Science. Extensive consultations were conducted with Humanities staff, students and faculty, with representatives of the Faculty’s academic units and with individual Indigenous staff and faculty. A draft of the document was reviewed by Qwul'sih'yah'maht Robina Thomas, UVic’s Vice President Indigenous.
Statement of commitment
The Dean, the Dean’s Office and the Faculty of Humanities commit themselves to the following goals:
- to create a warm, welcoming and respectful learning environment and sense of place for all Indigenous students, faculty and staff
- to increase the recruitment, retention and success of Indigenous staff and faculty across all units
- to support and recognize the research and scholarship of Indigenous faculty and graduate students
- to increase recruitment, retention and success of Indigenous students
- to support all faculty, staff and students to gain a better understanding of settler-Indigenous relations, the ongoing realities of colonization and their own relationship to the territory on which they live and the Indigenous peoples of that territory, and to reflect critically on settler-colonial values and assumptions
- to support and promote Indigenous research initiatives and opportunities for faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students
- to establish and promote culturally appropriate and inclusive definitions, guiding principles and protocols for research with Indigenous researchers, materials and participants
- to examine curricula and pedagogy across the faculty with a view to decolonizing and Indigenizing as well as affirming and including Indigenous ways of knowing
- to support Indigenous Studies to thrive in the faculty
Toward these ends, we commit to undertake implementation work as follows:
- to implement the strategies and tactics outlined in the IIS
- to undertake regular reflection on steps taken so far
- to engage in regular (re)appraisal of whether these steps are having the desired effect and how we might improve upon them
- to update this plan as necessary when guiding documents from the university require such revision
Annual report
Our annual reports collect stories and updates from around the faculty to celebrate our community’s successes and share their accomplishments with you.