An independent research initiative, on its way to becoming an independent nonprofit research institute.
The Institute for Transatlantic Humanities is an independent research initiative whose purpose is to understand, strengthen and renew humanistic intellectual life by developing systematic capabilities for observing how humanistic knowledge is produced, transmitted, received, transformed and circulated. Its principal field of concentration is the traffic between Europe and North America, the two ecosystems that have shaped one another most and that are compared least carefully.
“Transatlantic” names a concentration, not a limit. The humanities the Institute observes are the disciplines concerned with the interpretation, articulation, criticism, preservation and transmission of human meaning: philosophy, theology and religious studies first, because that is where the instrument began, with the others to follow as the sources are admitted.
The Institute is presently an initiative, not yet an incorporated body. It does not solicit donations and is not a charity, and it will say plainly when that changes. Its research infrastructure is provided by Gondolin Labs, a private research-engineering operation, under an arrangement in which the Institute retains responsibility for scholarly methodology, interpretation and every research conclusion. That relationship will be disclosed and governed at arm’s length when the Institute incorporates.
An institute for something is an institute that acts on its behalf. The Institute is for the humanities across the Atlantic in that sense: not a department of them, but a standing effort on their account.