ANNUAL THEME

Bound, Bind, Bonds — these interrelated terms have long shaped humanities scholarship, offering frameworks to explore socio-cultural, historical, and economic relationships. Binding, for example, may describe bodily modifications that align inner identity with outward appearance. To be bound can evoke temporal stuckness or dissonance, or signal connection to structures that guide but also constrain, while Bondage names systems of confinement and exclusion. Yet these terms also gesture toward affective ties—community, intimacy, and solidarity.

This year’s theme invites reflection on the various ways we are bound and unbound, as well as the shifting forms that binding and bonds can take.