Humanities Week: "Back to the Present"

The past three years have transformed our lives forever, but this is our first year returning back to a relatively new normal. A play on the name of the classic film trilogy Back to the Future, this year’s Humanities Week theme, “Back to the Present,” marks a return to the past as we once knew it, but also a heightened awareness of the new present. Time has felt frozen since the pandemic began, but the world is far from being stagnant. What does it mean to be “present,” both in the sense of time and as a state of mind? And what does it mean to be turning back to the present? These questions and more will be explored in a weeklong series of events examining how time has influenced our perception of ourselves and those around us as we journey towards a better future.