The 2017 annual meeting of the CHCI hosted by the UWC Centre for Humanities Research

The 2017 annual meeting of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) explored the multiple ways in which improvisation has enabled and facilitated the study of the humanities, not least in times of great social upheaval. Under the theme of The Humanities Improvised, the annual meeting gathered together artists, art commentators and humanists from member institutions to reconceptualize the relationship between art and the humanities against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world of work, politics and technology. The very concept of the public sphere is being recast in the twenty-first century as a consequence. The CHCI annual meeting explored these shifts against the backdrop of an African and South African context where debates about nationalism, decolonization, neocolonialism, postcolonialism, globalization and neoliberalism have found complex expression and contestation in burgeoning arts initiatives across the continent, producing possibilities for new models of aesthetic education and cultural critique.