CHATS Homepage
Welcome to THE CENTER FOR HUMANITIES, ARTS AND TECHNOSCIENCE (CHATS), a bold interdisciplinary initiative within The College of Arts and Sciences dedicated to promoting the human dimension of scientific and technological discovery and exploring their profound impact on individuals and society.
THE CENTER FOR HUMANITIES, ARTS AND TECHNOSCIENCE is designed to promote exchange between the sciences and the humanities and to serve as a forum providing the University at Albany and the wider community with a model of intellectual and aesthetic innovation and outreach. THE CENTER FOR HUMANITIES, ARTS AND TECHNOSCIENCES has evolved into a university-wide initiative where faculty, students, administrators, community members and artists, technology experts, and nationally recognized scholars are exploring the boundaries between academic fields and engaged in interdisciplinary programs and performances during the Spring 2003 HumaniTech Semester.
Our first major project, The Technology Plays, produced in collaboration with Capital Repertory Theatre and Apple Computer, funded in part by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation's “Imagining America” Program, attracted large and diverse audiences as well as the national press. The project brings players and audience members together in a series of short interactive plays that explore the complex relations between humans and machines. This unique aesthetic and educational project features commissioned plays by Pulitzer-prize winning author William Kennedy and international playwright and television writer Richard Dresser (“The Education of Max Bickford”) The New York Times Magazine included The Technology Plays in their annual roundup of the most innovative ideas of 2003.
In the future, the initiative will continue the work of the semester by incubating new aesthetic and research programs and projects, fostering research and new and emerging knowledge in the areas of Science, Technology, and Ethics, Aesthetics, Media, and Culture, and Humanities and Science. We invite proposals and project ideas from scholars and students in the humanities and sciences and from creative artists in all fields.
Dr. Mary Blatner Valentis
Director, THE CENTER FOR HUMANITIES, ARTS AND TECHNOSCIENCE/Department of English
University at Albany
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12222
518-442-4082 (Office)
518-436-3806 (Fax)
518-253-6940 (Cell)
