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Michigan Humanities Council
119 Pere Marquette, Suite 3B
Lansing, MI 48912
Phone: 517-372-7770
Fax: 517-372-0027
Email: contact [at] mihumanities.org
web: michiganhumanities.org

Michigan Humanities Council was founded in 1974 as the state's affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Mission Statement

The Michigan Humanities Council connects people and communities by fostering and creating quality cultural programs.

In carrying out its mission, the Council encourages and supports, through advocacy, fundraising and community engagement, a variety of activities which bring humanities scholars and the public together to examine culture. Moving forward the Council will:

• award grants for public humanities and cultural programs;
• conduct public humanities and cultural projects of statewide importance;
• initiate collaborations and partnerships to broaden and strengthen the organizational and institutional base for the humanities in Michigan; and
• provide the humanities with leadership and a public voice in Michigan.

Vision Statement

The Michigan Humanities Council will be known as a unifying force throughout Michigan, whose programs help people connect with one another and the places where they live, by fostering a greater understanding and engagement in the cultures, histories, and values which tell us who we were, are, and hope to be.

What are the humanities?

The humanities are ways of thinking about what is human about our diverse histories, values, ideas, words and dreams. They help to shape individuality and community, and thus pose fundamental questions about the past, present and future. The humanities inspire us to ask who we are and what our lives should mean. They ask us to place ourselves in the worldwide context of humankind and to understand commonalities and differences. The questions with which the humanities deal are found in all areas of study, but the humanities are most clearly identified with the following disciplines: comparative religion, ethics, philosophy, archaeology, classical and modern languages, linguisitics, jurisprudence, history, literature, history and criticism of the arts, and those social sciences which employ historical or philosophical approaches such as cultural anthropology and geography, international relations, political science or sociology.